(12-05-2019, 11:32 AM)z3bra Wrote: I disagree with that. The shell's job is to handle IPC, and that's it. Text processing is done by the processes themselves, the shell only connects outputs to the next process input.

What it's "job" is is quite secondary, as compared to what makes it useful as a tool. A shell that only would handle IPC would have no variables, aliases, functions, built-in commands and would hence be an all around pain to work with -- even more than a standard "minimalist shell". If there's no real reason to restrict yourself (such as having a typewriter instead of a screen, a PDP7 instead of *any modern day computer*), it's nonsense to reject developments and advances on the grounds of something that's basically a naturalistic fallacy of computing.

(12-05-2019, 11:32 AM)z3bra Wrote: Otherwise, you're creating a full blown text processor, that happens to have a way to start processes.

And what is the problem with that? I don't mean to be rude, but I honestly don't understand the problem. Especially considering the history that Unix has with text processing.