On Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 05:30:03PM +0200, Karl Ramberg wrote:
> "David T. Lewis" wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 21, 2001 at 03:39:20PM +0200, Karl Ramberg wrote:
> > > "David T. Lewis" wrote:
> > > > The most interesting conceptual problem right now is how to do the syntax
> > > > for a pipeline of mixed Smalltalk and Unix commands. I have a working
> > > > implementation at this point, but there is a cognitive impedence mismatch
> > > > in things like "echo hello | stdout nextPutAll: stdin upToEnd ! ".
> > >
> > > Maybe a little big project but a Smalltalk shell to unix would be cool.
> > > I read about the SmallScript project, maybe some ideas to pick up there.
> > 
> > CommandShell is a "Smalltalk shell to unix" written in Smalltalk and
> > running in the Squeak environment. Are you looking for something like
> > this, but with no GUI? It would probably be easy enough to do, now that
> > you mention it.
> 
> I though of a Smalltalk shell that replace the bash, so 
> even if you drop out to the *nix you run the same syntax/ semantic
> to make a more uniform interface for the user.
> But thinking about it, it does not seem like the best idea...
> 
> Karl

I have not figured out whether it is a good idea or not. I like
the unix metaphor of plugging "programs" together with "pipes".
CommandShell implements this, but it maintains the unix restriction
that only characters can go through the pipes. Smalltalk expressions
can be evaluated as part of the command pipeline, but the results
are converted to strings so they can be pushed through the pipeline.

I think I need to play with it for a while to see if it's really
useful.  Comments welcome.

Dave