From: Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2023 18:38:03 +1100
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Message-ID-Hash: QXYVSK4PQF4UNTPGHP5PK3P7EQV76VPD
Subject: [TUHS] v8 shell
Archived-At: <https://www.tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs@tuhs.org/message/QXYVSK4PQF4UNTPGHP5PK3P7EQV76VPD/>

Found this tweetstream, here folded together, when looking for something
else (now lost) in my twitter archive:

==========

Things I miss from the v8 shell.

1) All shell output was valid shell input.

2) Typing dir/cmd would find the command $PATH/dir/cmd. Subdirectories of
your bin, in other words.

3) Functions were exportable. For one brief shining POSIX meeting, that was
true in POSIX too but then...

4) The implementation was lovely and easy to understand. (No, it wasn't
shalgol. Bourne fixed that for us.)

5) That I could learn things from it, like how to write a recursive descent
parser.*

6) It ran in cooked mode.

As expected, all that work making it a great shell is lost to history.
https://t.co/IzApAUSmzN is silent. Well, the code is released now.


==========

-rob

* elegantly.