I feel stupid -- determine the full path to a file

[Michael L Torrie]

Shane Hathaway wrote:
> I agree that bash is frequently easier, but its documentation is
> scattered and IMHO bash is much more prone to bugs.  Even the earlier
> one-liner has a significant bug; it will fail if the path happens to
> contain a space.  Fortunately there's an obvious solution:

Bash is actually a very simple language and is well documented.  It's
just simple glue.  I mean to even do math you call other processes to do
it ($(()) is a shortcut, but still).

> 
> abspath=$(readlink -f "$fn")

In my opinion, that's simply a quirk, not a bug, that's well understood
and common to all command shells that I know of.  My original
implementation was properly quoted, of course; I forgot to put in the
quoted version in the e-mail.

> 
> For me, the numerous warts like this usually tip the balance in favor of
> a general purpose language.

You must love doing lots of popens and reading and writing to pipes in a
very manual fashion, then.  If my problem involves scripting other
commands (like this one), then I submit python is the wrong language.
It the problem involves processing data that can be done with python
modules, etc, then I'd be a fool to use bash for that.  The trick is
knowing where the line is.  Another option is to blend solutions.  A bit
of python, a bit of bash, which I do do when it's appropriate.

> 
> Shane
> 
> 
> /*
> PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net
> Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug
> Don't fear the penguin.
> */
> 


-- 
Michael Torrie
Assistant CSR, System Administrator
Chemistry and Biochemistry Department
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
+1.801.422.5771