Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

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I see, but then your scripts are not nice compact commands.

For instance, my most-used bash script takes a file as input and opens either VIM or Emacs depending on whether the file is a .md or .org (simplified example). I run it like so:

  $ n foo.org

I can edit ~/.local/bin/n and update the file, and use it immediately. I actually have my whole ~/.local/bin in version control. Having to type out e.g.

  $ nim compile --run n foo.org

...would make the whole experience far less fluent. I probably would never use it.

I'm asking because I'd love to rewrite this script in e.g. Rust, but I don't see any good way to deploy it to ~/.local/bin/n.

For nim, you could use something like nimcr (https://nimble.directory/pkg/nimcr). You put a shebang in your script `#!/usr/bin/env nimcr` and then call it like a normal script.

eg:

  $ code script.nim


  #!/usr/bin/env nimcr
  echo "hello world"


  $ ./script.nim
  hello world

edit:

There's also the possibility of using nimscript, using nim e. It works similarly but you'd change the shebang line to something like

  #!/usr/bin/env nim e --hints:off

Actually another way to do nimscript is to make a config.nims file with tasks in it. eg:

In config.nims:

  switch("hints", "off")
  task hello, "say hello world":
    echo "hello world"

In bash:

  $ nim hello
  hello world

Just alias the command in your .bashrc? e.g. `alias n="nim compile --run n"`. I'm not sure what the issue is with longer commands because the benefits of writing in a strongly statically typed language definitely outweigh a few extra characters to type, which you don't even need to do with aliases.

For what it's worth, you need only type "nim r n". If "n.nim" is marked executable and begins with "#!/usr/bin/nim r" then you also need only type "n.nim".

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