Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On 07.04.2024 05:46, Keith Thompson wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Sun, 07 Apr 2024 00:01:43 +0000, Javier wrote:
>

The downside is the loss of performance because of disk access for
trivial things like 'nfiles=$(ls | wc -l)'.

>
Well, you could save one process creation by writing
“nfiles=$(echo * | wc -l)” instead. But that would still not be strictly
correct.

 
If that saves a process, it's because echo is builtin.

You can use only built-ins, e.g. along the line of

  set * ; nfiles=$#

(It's not only faster but also has less issues.)

Janis

But it will set
$nfiles to 1 (unless you happen to have files with newlines in their
names).  Both skip hidden files, which may or may not be what you want.
 
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