On Mon, 2011-03-21 at 11:15 -0500, Andrew Berg wrote: > For now, I'm on Windows and I have a bash script written for doing > encodes using AviSynth (which, IIRC, is either a PITA or impossible to > properly set up on Linux). Anyway, I'd like to move away from a > MinGW/MSYS environment (the project as a whole is updated > semi-regularly, but most of the programs are really old versions) and > dependence on external programs (e.g. sed, basename, tr). Since I'm > using Windows, I've looked into PowerShell. It has a ton of features > built-in that can replace the standard Unix utilities, and comes > pre-installed with Windows 7, but it's also extremely complicated, not > that great as just a shell (no history from past sessions, it has cmd's > annoying version of tab completion, and one can't cycle through past > commands and go back to an empty prompt, just like cmd), and it uses > quite a bit of memory compared to bash, which is an issue since the > denoiser I use needs tons of memory. It seems like a Windows domain > admin's wet dream, but not quite right for my purposes. cmd might be > able to do the job, but I really don't want to spend my time working > around its limitations. Can anyone recommend a scripting language that's > easy to learn, easy to keep up-to-date on Windows (I would prefer that > the interpreter is just a file or two that can be dropped into a > directory in my path rather than something installed in the usual > manner) and has built-in functionality that can replace at least some of > the utilities I use (grep, sed, basename and tr)? Perl and Python I know work on Windows really well and should be able to do all of your grep/sed/tr type work with no difficulties at all. You can also use Cygwin on Windows which for me has worked pretty well in the past when I was stuck on a Win box.