marcmagus | Mini-Rant: Executables with filename extensions (Reply)

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1hand - 3 uses
allergies - 4 uses
cabinet - 7 uses
calendar - 3 uses
chromium - 4 uses
computer - 3 uses
convention - 8 uses
cvd - 6 uses
dance - 24 uses
devnull - 3 uses
drugs - 3 uses
dw - 24 uses
encoding - 8 uses
fail - 2 uses
food - 9 uses
games - 5 uses
gentoo - 3 uses
hair - 12 uses
hands - 10 uses
hardware - 2 uses
health - 4 uses
house - 3 uses
humor - 4 uses
internet - 3 uses
jlj - 4 uses
lenses - 3 uses
linux - 8 uses
lj - 12 uses
meme - 4 uses
music - 3 uses
navel-gazing - 6 uses
nethack - 4 uses
newport - 4 uses
noncon - 8 uses
pain - 3 uses
politics - 6 uses
polyphasic sleep - 8 uses
programming - 3 uses
quest prizes - 4 uses
rant - 8 uses
regency - 8 uses
science! - 6 uses
test - 9 uses
tools - 36 uses
tv - 4 uses
twitter - 3 uses
ui - 5 uses
vim - 5 uses
wtf - 3 uses
zelda - 7 uses

I just want to mention, for the record, that I hate filename extensions on anything with the executable bit set. Yes, I'm looking at you, authors of Perl and Python scripts.

When I'm at the command-line and want to run a command (say, "todo"), I want to type "todo" and have it work. I don't want to have to type "todo.pl", nor do I want to have to type "todo<TAB>" to get my shell to do it for me. I shouldn't have to know, or care, or even be reminded of what scripting language the script I'm invoking was written in. Isn't the entire point of the "she-bang" magic line available in all modern shells that you can run a script without having to know what kind of script it is?

Can anybody give me a single good reason we keep tacking all this ugly garbage onto the end of our scripts? It's not like editors can't use that same first line to figure out what kind of script it is and turn on appropriate syntax features. (I'm sorry, it's 2008. If your editor can't handle that, what's wrong with your editor?)

So why is my world filled with "todo.pl" and "moap.py" and "generate.sh" (in all probability requiring bash, no less)? Will you all just cut it out? I'm sick of having to symlink and alias around your annoying naming conventions.