Great Computer Language Shootout Revived

[Monty J. Harder]

"Charles Steinkuehler" <charles at steinkuehler.net> wrote:

> Yeah, it doesn't quite seem like the bash solution should be allowed.
>
> The bash solution to the word count problem is similar...

On the contrary, it's the =perfect= solution.  It's what the Unix shell is
all about - combing the tools that come with the system to get a job done.

One of my co-workers is a 'programmer'.  So when he wants to make a tool to
help our people get something accomplished, he has to compile it for SCO
Open Server (may run under Linux with ibcs module), compile again for AIX,
and thereby produce a big honking binary.  I, OTOH, am a hacker.  So I write
shell scripts that call on system tools like sed/awk/grep/head/tail/wc...
What I produce is much smaller, and can run under both platforms with a few

if [ `uname` = 'AIX' ]

directives where necessary, which isn't that often.