What makes Unix shell scripting special?
Sample Unix shell command:
grep '^X-Spam-Level' | sort | unique | wc -lSample Haskell function:
length . nub . sort . filter (isPrefixOf "X-Spam-Level")(isPrefixOf and nub are from the Data.List module)
<sarcasm>
Pointfree combinator programming is very intimidating, abstract, and
is no more than a theoretical curiosity --- you always put the points
back in real programs. Unix shell pipelining is very intuitive,
down-to-earth, and is a matter of bread-and-butter --- it is
impractical to create, track, and clean up temporary files in real
applications.
</sarcasm>
This was part of a post on comp.lang.functional (Google copy).