From: Ryan Paul <segphault@...>
Date: 2004-05-13T21:33:57+09:00
Subject: Re: any ideas for a shell based on Ruby?

On Fri, 07 May 2004 05:50:20 -0700, Martinus wrote:

> hello newsgroup,
> 
> Recently I have played with the idea of writing a shell based on ruby.
> I think this would be pretty cool, consider the following syntax:
> 
> user@machine ~> ls.sort(:time).last.rm
> 
> removes the oldest file in current directory:
> 1. ls returns a special array of Filename objects
> 2. The array is sorted by the attribute :date
> 3. the last element is chosen from the array
> 4. the file removes itself
> 
> I am looking for other good ideas that justify creating such a ruby
> based shell :-)
> 
> Martin

I was thinking about a ruby os shell last night, and wondering if anybody
had tried it. I was pondering the possibility of a ruby based vfs engine.
I was also thinking about using operator overload to simplify appending
content to files, etc. I also really want to be able to natively use xpath
style operations on xml files from the command line:

ls ~/files/file.xml//somenode/somenode2[@someattr]


Your sample syntax is very appealing, btw.

--SegPhault