Why questions don't get answered, or "No, I've already RTFM, tell me the answer!"

[Jeff Vian]

On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 10:29 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 05:21, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > >
> > >Often the man pages have examples of the way the author expected
> > >the program to be used.  However, there's still a good chance
> > >that isn't exactly what you want to do with it.
> > 
> > I submit to you all the manpages for bash.
> > 
> > Paragraph after paragraph of explanation of this option and that option 
> > in a quite verbose manner, and not a single actual example of a 
> > command line, and the results it should return.
> 
> Bash is kind of unusual because it is normally the 'calling'
> program, not the one being executed on a command line - or if
> you do execute it intentionally as a command the purpose is
> to start some other program in a subshell.  What you need
Not entirely true.  Many of us use shell scripts to do a significant
amount of work that would otherwise be tedious and repetitive.


> to know about bash is what it does to your command lines
> (splitting on IFS, expanding variables and wildcard filenames,
> redirection i/o etc.) before starting any other program.
> What those other programs do or return is their own business
> but they probably are the real reason you are issuing a
> shell command.
Sure, you need to know *how* to use it and the programming features that
often function in the background. Bash is a genuine programming
environment, as well as a command interpreter.

What most people see is the ability to call other programs.  What is
actually there is *much* more and extremely versatile.

> 
> > That makes writing 
> > even a 10 line bash script into an extended reading and re-reading 
> > session with heavy use of the manpages builtin grep because its so 
> > poorly organized that the complete answer may be in 3 or more places 
> > scattered through it.
> 
> That 10 line bash script might execute 20 different external
> commands, none of which the bash author anticipated.  That's
> why the system is powerful - whenever anyone adds a new tool
> you are able to combine it's operations with all the others
> but it also makes it impossible to document all the possibilities.
> 
> -- 
>   Les Mikesell
>     lesmikesell at gmail.com
> 
>