[om-list] shell

[Tom and other Packers]

Mark

    I have two more concerns/wishes concerning my MTShell:

    My primary concern:

    I plan on programming and compiling a bunch of small utilities.  Then I
will write a shell that will follow a script to co-ordinate the running of
multiple utilities, including other shell scripts.  I want to be able to
write a low-level shell script with the same basic input/output
functionality as any of the lower-level utilities.  A low-level script would
have the following properties:  (1) The data piped into the first utilities
in this script would be piped into it from some other utility/script, as
though it (the shell script) were just another utility.  (2) The data
produced by the last utilities in this script would be output from the
script as though it were a utility.  (3) The script could be run like a
utility from a higher-level shell script, including the use of parameters
and return values.

    Is this not a logical continuation of the original design?  Were you
assuming as much, or is this harder to do than I think?

    My secondary concern:

    I'm guessing that after I've written a few levels of scripts, the
high-level shell script would run rather sluggishly.  Do you think so?  In
these cases, once we've written a high-level script that should be run many
times, but which is too slow as an interpreted script, would it be possible
(and reasonably easy) to write a compiler to convert that *same script* into
something that executes faster?  How could this be done?  Is there a way to
merge the script and the source code of the shell and the utilities in such
a way that it can be compiled into one homogeneous executable?

ciao,
tomp