Re: [Fsfe-uk] An ignorant question?

[Robin Green]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 12:05:14AM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
> The work I'm currently doing uses (binary) flat files, and manually
> doing an outer join and sorting using two keys, using this BASIC-like
> 4GL is a nightmare.  Over 1000 LOC, when it could be done in a single
> SQL statement!!

I once tried to do a similar thing (couple of joins and a sort) using
a shell script (in bash). What was I thinking? "Hmmm, this looks like a trivial
task, maybe I don't need to use a real programming language."

My advice: don't do what I did. (Unless your boss forces you - commiserations
Roger!) This little experiment only reinforced my prejudice against programming
anything significant with bash and sed. Aren't regexps nice and readable? Not!
-- 
Robin