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Bourne to grep

Bourne shell example

And now for something completely different: a stupid script trick ...

once upon a time, i worked with two software developers who had just started their careers. after giving them a script, one of them complained that it didn't support the --help option.

the script was about ten lines including its shebang, without conditional expressions or complexity of any kind. i defended its informality by noting that scripts are text files, so developers can easily discover how to use them. my response had no effect, but i still think scripts written for members of the same development team may be less formal/helpful than usual.

since then, i did change my mind about one thing: for a long time, i used Python whenever statements were conditionally executed. i use the Bourne shell more often now.

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