You can already side-chain data flows with file descriptors. You can solve more complex problems with temp files and tee. I can't really imagine that making me use a GUI to select where to pipe what would be more efficient. Most of the time, when people have problems that require complex data manipulation like this, they'll jut use their favorite scripting language.
There is also not much stopping you from using PHP, Python, Ruby, or anything else with a REPL as your daily shell, but bash is the most popular and works quite well for this problem domain.
Not to sound like an old dude stuck in his ways, but there is a reason that we're still all using VT 100 and 220 emulators from 30+ years ago -- they work great.
"Not to sound like an old dude stuck in his ways, but there is a reason that we're still all using VT 100 and 220 emulators from 30+ years ago -- they work great."
No, they don't. Really. Look at the source code to ncurses and see if the millisecond timing loop around select() is still there, to distinguish between a terminal sending ESC[1D in response to you pressing "left cursor" and a human pressing "ESC" "[" "1" "D" very quickly :-)
It sucks. Windows got this right a long time ago, to the extent that the left & right modifier keys are distinguishable. Try doing that on a VT100.
Of course, a REAL VT100 doesn't have half the keys ; F1-F4 (IIRC) aren't sent "over the wire" and have no standard encoding. Linus basically invented one for the "linux" console terminal type, and lo yet another "standard" was born.
And don't talk to me about shells. The lunacy that is never quite knowing what insane metaquoting scheme you'll need today based on which arcane shell some moron has configured as the default for THIS particular machine is EXACTLY what the top-voted Koan is about.
> There is also not much stopping you from using PHP, Python, Ruby, or anything else with a REPL as your daily shell, but bash is the most popular and works quite well for this problem domain.
There is also not much stopping you from using PHP, Python, Ruby, or anything else with a REPL as your daily shell, but bash is the most popular and works quite well for this problem domain.
Not to sound like an old dude stuck in his ways, but there is a reason that we're still all using VT 100 and 220 emulators from 30+ years ago -- they work great.