I was recently talking with someone that was constructing an If/Then and they wanted a simple echo to match only if a condition was not met. Given their other requirements it seemed a great use for a null operator, which in bash can be a colon (:). This has the equivalent of /dev/null, but with less typing. One example of populating something with null is if you have a case where you want to create a file where there may or may not be a file already, and you want your new file to be empty (or start empty so you can write lines into it). Here, you could have…
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Interpreting Python
Once upon a time I had to learn to script in bash. I’m still learning, as with most people, but I’m feeling pretty comfortable. I often have people ask me what is the easiest way to learn scripting and I find myself telling people to use the history command. Much of what people need beyond simply looking at their bash history involves variable substitution, loops and regular expressions. Tackled separately this makes a palatable experience. So then what makes object-oriented or interpretive languages such as perl or python so much more difficult? Is it the lack of a bash history? Let’s try and exercise and see about that. Open a…