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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Should I focus efforts on learning Perl or develop skills in awk, sed, etc Post 302637203 by brianjb on Tuesday 8th of May 2012 01:32:24 PM
Old 05-08-2012
Should I focus efforts on learning Perl or develop skills in awk, sed, etc

Good afternoon,

I am not trying to start a debate. Please don't take it that way. I'm not trying to make this a Perl versus Bash scripts thing.

I have been writing shell scripts for several years. I am not 100%, but I seem to get the job done. I would like to start focusing on spending some spare time in tuning my skill set and becoming a better scripter in the process. So do I need to focus on shell scripting (awk, sed, etc) or will it be useful if I do Perl? I am thinking that I need to pick or the other.....kind of better to be 100% at one than 50% at each. Is that right?

Here is what I do currently (I may be leaving some things off):

1. Run MYSQL queries to get data out of a large database. We will be switching to an Oracle database over the next year as we change vendors on one of the products we use.
2. Process DNS zone files. Sometimes there is a need to generate DNS zone files based on reading in data from various forms (csv files, etc).
3. Write scripts that monitor system performance. They log and also send mail if there are issues.
4. Write scripts that query the MYSQL database and either mail that information or create csv file.
5. As you know, we are moving from MYSQL database to Oracle database since we are changing products. I also write scripts that query the database and put the output into a csv that is in the right format for importing into the new product via their CLI's.

As you can see, pretty much the gist of what I do is to take data (sometimes large amounts) and then put it into a certain format. Perl people say that Perl is the best...and old times UNIX guys, say that it can all be done with shell scripts. Both of them are partially right.

Do you think I need to focus my efforts on fine tuning my shell scripting knowledge or should I also learn Perl.

Keep in mind, that I don't know what the future holds. I would like to make myself marketable in the future.

Thanks!
 

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NPM-RUN-SCRIPT(1)                                                                                                                NPM-RUN-SCRIPT(1)

NAME
npm-run-script - Run arbitrary package scripts SYNOPSIS
npm run-script <command> [--silent] [-- <args>...] alias: npm run DESCRIPTION
This runs an arbitrary command from a package's "scripts" object. If no "command" is provided, it will list the available scripts. run[-script] is used by the test, start, restart, and stop commands, but can be called directly, as well. When the scripts in the package are printed out, they're separated into lifecycle (test, start, restart) and directly-run scripts. As of ` https://blog.npmjs.org/post/98131109725/npm-2-0-0, you can use custom arguments when executing scripts. The special option -- is used by getopt https://goo.gl/KxMmtG to delimit the end of the options. npm will pass all the arguments after the -- directly to your script: npm run test -- --grep="pattern" The arguments will only be passed to the script specified after npm run and not to any pre or post script. The env script is a special built-in command that can be used to list environment variables that will be available to the script at run- time. If an "env" command is defined in your package, it will take precedence over the built-in. In addition to the shell's pre-existing PATH, npm run adds node_modules/.bin to the PATH provided to scripts. Any binaries provided by locally-installed dependencies can be used without the node_modules/.bin prefix. For example, if there is a devDependency on tap in your package, you should write: "scripts": {"test": "tap test/*.js"} instead of "scripts": {"test": "node_modules/.bin/tap test/*.js"} to run your tests. The actual shell your script is run within is platform dependent. By default, on Unix-like systems it is the /bin/sh command, on Windows it is the cmd.exe. The actual shell referred to by /bin/sh also depends on the system. As of ` https://github.com/npm/npm/releases/tag/v5.1.0 you can customize the shell with the script-shell configuration. Scripts are run from the root of the module, regardless of what your current working directory is when you call npm run. If you want your script to use different behavior based on what subdirectory you're in, you can use the INIT_CWD environment variable, which holds the full path you were in when you ran npm run. npm run sets the NODE environment variable to the node executable with which npm is executed. Also, if the --scripts-prepend-node-path is passed, the directory within which node resides is added to the PATH. If --scripts-prepend-node-path=auto is passed (which has been the default in npm v3), this is only performed when that node executable is not found in the PATH. If you try to run a script without having a node_modules directory and it fails, you will be given a warning to run npm install, just in case you've forgotten. You can use the --silent flag to prevent showing npm ERR! output on error. You can use the --if-present flag to avoid exiting with a non-zero exit code when the script is undefined. This lets you run potentially undefined scripts without breaking the execution chain. SEE ALSO
o npm help 7 scripts o npm help test o npm help start o npm help restart o npm help stop o npm help 7 config January 2019 NPM-RUN-SCRIPT(1)
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