From: utzoo!decvax!cca!RSanders.Pascalx@Usgs2-Multics@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: re: shell compiler
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.4122
Posted: Tue Nov 16 03:48:47 1982
Received: Thu Nov 18 09:57:40 1982

Date:  11 November 1982 18:11 mst
Funny you should mention a shell compiler.  Two days ago, John Mashey
from Bell Labs gave a talk here in Palo Alto entitled 'Software Army on
the March'.  One of the projects he described was a product written for
the operating companies with something like 25,000  lines of shell
script.  He said they looked long and very hard at a shell compiler, and
did some measurements.  They found that even monster shell scripts spend
most of their time in the called programs, and writing a compiler would
not be worth the effort.
  BTW, I highly recommend his talk to anyone involved in large (or even
medium) scale software projects.