Re: App blueprint, advice please!

[Dan H <dunno stoptrick com>]

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:47:44 -0500
Patrick <optomatic rogers com> wrote:

> With so many aspects to this does anyone think that using Bash
> would be useful? For example if we designed all the  smaller
> programs to read and write from/to standard input and output, they
> could be interlinked with other Bash commands such as ftp, netcat,
> ssh, mailx and so on..
> 
> Lets say a customer had a detector and a pump to pump a sample
> through it. We could write a Bash script that works something like
> this:
> 
> -icon launches Bash script
> -sends variable " 2" to pump command to pump 2 ml per minute
> -pump command sends signal to serial port or GPIB bus, etc
> -bash sends variable "230" to set the detector to wavelength 230 nm
> -bash autozeros detector
> -launches plot command
> -after that launches data process command
> -then launches database storage command
> - emails whoever, turns your coffee maker on or whatever....etc..etc
> 
> It's a terrible over simplification but hopefully illustrates the
> idea.

I got the idea but I don't think the Bourne shell (bash) would be a particular wise choice to implement it, owing to weird programming paradigms and an almost complete absence of arithmetics. I'm a big fan of C (and shell scripting as well), but it seems that Python has been gaining lots of popularity in the past years.

--D.