Shell access for Rebol, was: zip file support

Heya Jamey, JC> Again, RT has the right to do anything they want with Rebol. Unfortunately, JC> programmers have the NEED to get their jobs done. I have already been forced JC> to scrap one application I was writing for work in Rebol and re-do it in JC> Tcl/Tk. Tcl allowed me to do the vital shell access I needed. I'd just like to add here that I'm going to side with the school of thought on Core having some sort of shell access. I've thought a bit about why RT are doing it the current way and I can see the benefit in having platform independence 100% with Core as it stands. However to my mind that's just 'nice' balanced against something which Rebol could *really* use to get a nice hook into the hobbyist as well as the professional development sectors. I believe there is a niche in a lovely little language like Rebol being able to do things on the PC rather like folks used to do things on the Amiga with Arexx. A powerful, easy to use language that ultimately had shell access. I know how good it could be because I have it in Rebol/Command and it's astoundingly useful. I think there's more than enough differentiation with Rebol/Command having direct DLL and ODBC access for the higher end developers. Ultimately a higher user-base would benefit RT more than the commercial exploitation of Command to those just wanting shell access. I think we all know folks that have run off to do things in Perl or TCL purely because they couldn't do things with Rebol. I think this is a great shame. I've done some amazing things to make my friends and colleagues go "Oooooo, I didn't know you were a ninja programmer". Yet I'd have a hard time evangelising it as it currently stands. Which is a shame. I like to evangelise things like Rebol because they're speechlessly cool. But this is a holding it back for much useful applications and a wider acceptance imo. -- Mat Bettinson - EuroGamer's Gaming Evangelist with a Goatee http://www.eurogamer.net | http://www.eurogamer-network.com

From: Mat Bettinson

> <major snip> Yet > I'd have a hard time evangelising it as it currently stands. > > Which is a shame. I like to evangelise things like Rebol because > they're speechlessly cool. But this is a holding it back for much > useful applications and a wider acceptance imo.

Me too :-) I'll give an example why I want shell access in Core. I could write a rather cool programmer's tool in REBOL. The script could: checkout a project from CVS server, run make (which runs C++ compiler and linker), run unit tests, send log via email, pack distribution files with zip, tar and gzip, upload it to a web site, send all subscribers notification email, all from REBOL in one step. Writing such application in REBOL with shell access would take several hours. And it would be even portable between Windows, Linux, and, for example, Solaris, because all used tools are already ported and behave identically on different platforms. I know that sending email with SMTP protocol is more portable than calling /usr/bin/sendmail, and 'parse is more portable than calling awk. But the application I described cannot be written portably in REBOL without shell access, because REBOL does not contain CVS client, make functionality, C++ compiler and linker, tar, zip and gzip. -- Michal Kracik GS Jones wrote:

Me, too. :) I'd like shell access in /Core to be able to use the BeOS file system's attributes as a data storage facility. It's not a true relational database, but it can store ANY type of file in attributes, meaning images, sounds, etc., perfect for serving dynamic web pages. This is being done with perl at http://www.betips.net -Ryan