Star Bash vs Powershell
Linked by Adam S on Tue 8th Jul 2008 12:47 UTC
Talk, Rumors, X Versus Y In 2006, Microsoft released Windows Powershell, a new command line shell that, via cmdlets, scripts, and executables, allow core system administration tasks to be scripted. While this functionality has been available on Unix-type systems for decades, Microsoft's version will almost certainly, within a few years, be available on several hundred million PCs. So how does the Powershell stack up against Linux favorite bash? MSDN links to this Bash vs Powershell article.
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RE[2]: I don't get PowerShell
by grfgguvf on Tue 8th Jul 2008 14:05 UTC in reply to "RE: I don't get PowerShell"
grfgguvf
Member since:
2006-09-25

One of the goals of Powershell was matching the power of Unix scripting tools.

So they intentionally chose a Perl-like syntax, hence the $.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 0

RE[3]: I don't get PowerShell
by errant on Tue 8th Jul 2008 14:34 in reply to "RE[2]: I don't get PowerShell"
errant Member since:
2006-01-06

One of the goals of Powershell was matching the power of Unix scripting tools.

So they intentionally chose a Perl-like syntax, hence the $.


Unless you have a quote from one of the developers of powershell somewhere I'd really have to question this statement. That sounds a lot like "Oh I wanted to make a car with the power of a Porsche so I copied the horse emblem."

The reason why a lot of early languages used variable identifiers such as the $ was because it made life so much easier from the parser point of view, especially if you are designating a difference between the variable as an object in its own right or whether you wanted the contents of the variable.

Now with regard to why powershell uses it I don't have a good answer, its supposed to be based around the .net framework which doesn't need those type of identifiers and to be honest it feels like if they were constructing a scripting language from scratch they would have made it syntactically comparable to more modern languages.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

grfgguvf Member since:
2006-09-25

Early languages like FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, etc had no such syntax.

I don't have a specific quote but if you look at Powershell it resembles Perl in a lot of other ways.

And yes putting a Porschë emblem on a car instantly makes it much more marketable!

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: -1