Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!eos!eugene
From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Bondage and Discipline Languages (shells != not data flow)
Message-ID: <2269@eos.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jan 89 00:58:44 GMT
References: <27309@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.
Lines: 37

In article <27309@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes:
>Dataflow languages? Don't forget our favorite:
>
>% cat languagelist | grep dataflow | awk '{ printf $2  "is dataflow!\n" }'
>sh is dataflow!
>csh is dataflow!
>ksh is dataflow!
>
>looks like dataflow to me!

I first heard this comparison given by Mike O'Dell (then at LBL).
While the pipeline is neat (i.e., in the beginning was the pipe, and the
pipe was good....), I didn't quite believe it.  Time passed.  Then David
posted this; sorry, David.  Fortunately, Jack Dennis is now working down the
hall, I asked him about my gut uneasiness, and he resolved something
I could not:

# Date: Tue, 3 Jan 89 15:36:30 PST
# From: Jack Dennis <dennis@riacs.edu>
# To: dennis@riacs.edu, eugene@eos.arc.nasa.gov
# Subject: Re:  Question?
# Status: R
# 
# Are Unix shell languages "data flow" languages?  --  Not really. They use
# the notion of composing stream functions, however since the individual
# func may cause "side effects" on files, I would not call them pure
# functional, and therefore they are not data flow.
# 
#     -j

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
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