In a certain sense, files everywhere is great, that's the promise of unix, or plan9 to a further extent.
However, unstructured files, or files that all have their own formats, is also equally hampering. Trying to even parse an nginx log file can be annoying with just awk or some such.
One of the big disadvantages is that large system rewrites and design changes cannot be executed in the linux userland.
All to say, I'd love a smarter shell, I love files, I have my awk book sitting next to me, but I think it's high time to get some serious improvements on parsing data.
In the same way programs are smart enough to know to render colored output or not, I'd love it if it could dump structured output (or not)
However, unstructured files, or files that all have their own formats, is also equally hampering. Trying to even parse an nginx log file can be annoying with just awk or some such.
One of the big disadvantages is that large system rewrites and design changes cannot be executed in the linux userland.
All to say, I'd love a smarter shell, I love files, I have my awk book sitting next to me, but I think it's high time to get some serious improvements on parsing data.
In the same way programs are smart enough to know to render colored output or not, I'd love it if it could dump structured output (or not)