[erlang-questions] suggestion: shorthand functions

[Ulf Wiger]

Since I've been writing a bunch of rebar.config.script code lately,
I've suffered the agony of trying to write concise and readable 
code without having to do tons of copy-paste, weird unwrapping
funs etc.

What I think would make this sort of thing easier, and also 
escript programming in general, is if OTP could provide some
modules with concise naming and let-it-fail semantics.

Just off the top of my head, I scribbled down a few functions that
I think would make *my* life easier. I pushed them to github to
get some discussion going.

http://github.com/uwiger/shorthand

The modules are:

f.erl - shorthand functions for file.erl
fn.erl - ditto for filename.erl
e.erl - ditto for erl_eval.erl

The least beneficial is perhaps filename:erl, but my fingers and
eyes ache from all the filename:join(filename:dirname(F), …)
code.

Otherwise, I think the biggest benefit is to stick to let-it-crash
programming, which I find is usually the default when I write
scripts. The original functions are always available if you want
to take a closer look at return values.

(For the file:script() counterparts, I also always pass the name
of the script as a binding).

Comments?

BR,
Ulf W

Ulf Wiger, Co-founder & Developer Advocate, Feuerlabs Inc.
http://feuerlabs.com