On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 5:08 PM, Bill Gradwohl <b...@ycc.com> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Thorsten Glaser <tg...@mirbsd.org> wrote: > >> People complain about the readability of code enough already, and as >> practice shows, things like [[ have been around and nobody uses them >> anyway (often using just POSIX, but not even knowing – myself included >> – that POSIX sh has $((…))⁺; or even using less-than-POSIX, e.g. in >> autoconf, which means that anything we were to introduce now would not >> be used in the places where it counts anyway, for compatibility). >> > > > I'm a professional software developer (operating system internals mostly), > but I have no standing in your group. However, I'd like to provide a hint > as to why features aren't known about or used. I agree that adding new > capabilities would largely be a wasted effort unless the most serious BASH > deficiency is addressed first. It's the documentation - or lack of it > PROPERLY done. Adding features that only your core group knows about might > be "scratching your own itch", but does little to help the average end user > unless its PROPERLY documented. > > The man page is written the way Robbie the Robot used to speak in the old > black and white TV days. Short, cryptic and in many cases unintelligible IN > THE DETAILS. Alternatively, one might snicker that some lawyer wrote it to > purposely make it difficult to understand. As with most of the > documentation I've seen in the Linux community, it's awful. > > What's documented may indeed be the truth, but its not the whole truth, and > lacks so many of the details, the finer points, as to make what's written > of little value in and of itself. I find myself experimenting > (experimenting - euphemism for wasting lots of valuable time) with test > scripts precisely because the documentation largely just hints at what's > possible. > > The only people with the expertise to write proper documentation are the > authors / maintainers of the actual code base. Anyone else trying to do > that job without a thorough understanding of what the code actually says, > would be guessing in many cases, and would produce a sub optimum product. > Better perhaps than what is available now, but still not what it could be. > > The single largest failing in BASH, and in most of what's available open > source, is the documentation. > > > -- > Bill Gradwohl
nice troll.
