> I was wondering, maybe this has been discussed before and dismissed, how
> hard would it be to write a Unix/Linux shell whose language was Ruby, or a
> slight variant. Basically if performance wasn't an issue this could sit on top 
> of another shell (eg. bash/sh), and wrap commands, and any variance needed in 
> the syntax could be achieved via a preprocessor. I think some people
> are/were doing this with Perl, although I don't know how serious an attempt
> it is/was. I just think it would be very cool to have so much power in my
> command line.  Please tell me if I'm being crazy.

Hi,

what do you think of writing a 'shell' library for Ruby. This means: 
suppose you want to write a shell. you write a support library that
implements job control, redirection, etc.; but in the end you don't write
the real shell. the real shell, here, is Ruby, with the help of that
library. 

I think what sets shell languages apart is not the ability to start other
processes alone, but also to stop them / control them in general (bg fg
ctrl+z jobs), and bind them together and with files. syntactic
optimization is secondary to that, and might even hinder the integration
with code that is less shell-like (current ruby programming). 

matju