> But if one approaches them thinking that “the shell is a real language and must be written as such”, with solid principles in mind
Then one would simply choose a proper language that had more of those solid principles laid at its foundation
Then one would simply choose a proper language that had more of those solid principles laid at its foundation
"Stephen Bourne's coding style was influenced by his experience with the ALGOL 68C compiler that he had been working on at Cambridge University... Moreover, – although the v7 shell is written in C – Bourne took advantage of some macros to give the C source code an ALGOL 68 flavor. These macros (along with the finger command distributed in Unix version 4.2BSD) inspired the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC)."