I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
This is a really great overview. Probably the clearest thing I've ever read about substitutions and their ilk :)
One thing I might add to it would be just to flag which bits are POSIX. Like where you have the single- vs. double-square-brackets rule of thumb, you say that if you need to use test or [ you'll know it - well the main reason you'd know it is if you were wanting to write a script which might be portable, i.e. work in a foreign shell.
Ryan is an engineer in the Sacramento Area with a focus in Python, Ruby, and Rust. Bash/Python Exercism mentor. Coding, physics, calculus, music, woodworking. Looking for work!
Thanks! I’ll put something in there about that. I tried to avoid it, because I found during my research that articles that constantly focused on POSIX really distracted from the rest of the info. But you are right that it’s probably good to at least mention that it is a thing.
Thanks for the feedback!
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This is a really great overview. Probably the clearest thing I've ever read about substitutions and their ilk :)
One thing I might add to it would be just to flag which bits are POSIX. Like where you have the single- vs. double-square-brackets rule of thumb, you say that if you need to use
testor[you'll know it - well the main reason you'd know it is if you were wanting to write a script which might be portable, i.e. work in a foreign shell.Thanks! I’ll put something in there about that. I tried to avoid it, because I found during my research that articles that constantly focused on POSIX really distracted from the rest of the info. But you are right that it’s probably good to at least mention that it is a thing.
Thanks for the feedback!