How to replace every-day bash commands with Babashka?

Questions & Help How to?
1

I am starting to learn Babashka in order to learn (supercedes Clojure Shell) the way we have (supercedes Clojure [Javascript Python SQL CSS HTML]). The examples show cool stuff with some advanced needs, but to get started I just want to replace my every-day shell script. In particular I’m looking for replacements to mv, rm, and cp. I don’t want to do this with clojure.java.shell; in that case, I would just write the bash script. Can I do it in an OS-agnostic way in Babashka?

1 Like
2

To replace cp, I worked out this one-liner, which seems to be ok for text files, but it fails with non-text files, as well as likely efficiency problems.

bb '(->> "whatev.txt" slurp (spit "whatev2.txt"))'
1 Like
3

You can use clojure.java.io for this, although java.nio might have better functions for it nowadays.

$ echo "babashka" > /tmp/a
$ bb '(io/copy (io/file "/tmp/a") (io/file "/tmp/b"))'
$ cat /tmp/b
babashka
2 Likes
4

Awesome! I can adjust a recursive version (cp -r) too. What about bash mv? Is there a way without doing the copy and adding a delete?

5

I actually had to look that one up, but it seems you can do it this way:

bb '(.renameTo (io/file "/tmp/a") (io/file "/tmp/moved"))'

See:

Babashka also supports java.nio:

$ bb '(java.nio.file.Files/move (.toPath (io/file "/tmp/moved")) (.toPath (io/file "/tmp/a")) (into-array [java.nio.file.StandardCopyOption/REPLACE_EXISTING]))'
2 Likes
6

Thank you, and extra plus for demonstrating how to include java.nio methods

7

With the tragic oversight I’ve come to expect from Java, there doesn’t appear to be a one-liner for recursive copy to match the recursive move.

8

I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a tragic oversight. “Recursive move” is not recursive!

9

I should have called it “deep move,” with no similar “deep copy”

10

I wrote a thing but never quite finished it, you might find it helpful for a lot of these things:

1 Like
11

So here’s copying recursively:

Here’s move:

and rename:

1 Like
12

Awesome, @nate ! Great suggestions. These might deserve reference on Babashka documentation!

13

This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.