Algebraic scripting?

This little shell trick just occurred to me and I wanted to share.

Often we want to execute a series of commands that contain a common prefix:

  git -C /path/to/bare/repo rev-list --count HEAD
  git -C /path/to/bare/repo tag
  git -C /path/to/pare/repo branch

Admittedly, this example is a bit contrived, but the point is that the long prefix makes it harder to tell at a glance what's going on. We can do this instead:

  xargs -L1 git -C /path/to/bare/repo <<-GIT
      rev-list --count HEAD
      tag
      branch
  GIT

If you squint at this just right, it sort of looks like Haksell's Applicative.