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Cake day: August 6th, 2023

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  • Succinctness, mainly. but honestly, that succinctness call can also be mostly acquired using sh.py, which is what I normally use if I’m using python as a sort of shell scripting - mostly because sh.py is a very minimal requirement, whereas Xonsh has quite a few dependencies.

    addendum: I’d say, if you’re already using Xonsh, and aren’t really looking to share your script with anyone other than Xonsh users or your own systems, you’d probably like to use .xsh scripts. But if you’re looking to share your script, use sh.py.


  • It’s a superset of python, so valid python should run fine. Imports into your shell are doable, too – for example, I import path.Path in my xonshrc, so it’s always available when I hit the shell. I don’t often have to use Path, because regular shell commands are often more straightforward. But when I do, it’s nice to have it already loaded. Granted, that could get kooky, depending on what you import and execute.

    You can associate/shebang Xonsh with .xsh files, or run “xonsh foo.xsh” - and that works like “bash foo.sh” would, except using xonsh syntax, of course.

    It’s not Bash compatible - copypasta of scripts may not work out. But it’s a good shell with some typical shell semantics.

    there are some great plugins, too - like autovox, which allows you to create python venvs associated with specific subfolders. so, cd myproject does the equivalent of cd myproject; . path/to/venv/bin/activate.

    overall, there definitely is some jank, but it’s a great tool and I love it.


  • I like nushell, but I love xonsh. Xonsh is the bastard love child of Python and Bash.

    it can be thought of as:

    • try this statement in Python
    • if there’s an exception, try it in bash.

    Now, that’s not a very accurate description, because the reality is more nuanced, but it allows for things like:

    for file in !(find | grep -i '[.]mp3^'):
        file = Path(file.strip())
        if file != Path('.') and file != file.with_suffix('.mp3'):
        mv @(file) @(file.with_suffix('.mp3'))
    

    Now, there are things in there I wouldn’t bother with normally - like, rather than using mv, I’d just use file.rename(), but the snippet shows a couple of the tools for interaction between xonsh and sh.

    • !(foo) - if writing python, execute foo, and return lines
    • @(foo) - if writing sh, substitute with the value of the foo variable.

    But, either a line is treated in a pyhony way, or in a shelly way - and if a line is shelly, you can reference Python variables or expressions via @(), and if it’s Pythony, you can execute shell code with !() or $(), returning the lines or the exact value, respectively.

    Granted, I love python and like shell well enough, and chimeras are my jam, so go figure.