I'm pleased to announce the first release of the HsUnix library. It enables you to do things easily in Haskell which are typically done by the shell. Thus Haskell can be used to write shell scripts. Features -------- Command Line Arguments Parser HsUnix has facilities for managing command line arguments, which are (hopefully) easier to use than the GHC library GetOpt. Command line arguments are described in lists of properties. HsUnix builds on top of GetOpt, but hides it completely. Command line arguments handling has been added because GetOpt was found to be too cumbersome. Shell Like Commands HsUnix has a growing list of front end functions for shell like programming, such as chmod or mkdir. They wrap calls to external programs, system calls or standard Haskell functions. Analyzing Paths Dealing with paths is not as trivial as it sounds. Take, for example ../for///./../bar/. HsUnix has taken care of it thoroughly and provides functions such as splitting a path into (real) path components, or syntactically normalising paths. Dealing with Processes and Calling External Programs There are corresponding functions in the GHC Posix library, but the ones here are simpler. Redirecting Input and Output HsUnix defines operators like ->- and ->>- which work just like redirection operators in shells. Building Pipes Reading the output of an external program, or piping the output of one program into the input of another, is almost as easy as in shells. HsUnix provides corresponding operators. Error Handling Error handling is one thing which is done much more thoroughly in HsUnix than in shells. Failed programs won't be silently ignored. Dynamic exceptions are used for error handling. Non zero exit codes are thrown as exceptions. Quoting of Strings and Building Commands for Shells Taking care of shell metacharacters usually isn't done right. HsUnix provides functions for doing it safely. Homepage -------- http://www.volker-wysk.de/hsunix -- Volker Wysk <post@volker-wysk.de> http://www.volker-wysk.de