Shell scripting with Elixir
When simple bash scripts start to become unwieldy, you may consider reaching out for something “higher” level, like Perl, Ruby or Python. I’m reaching out for Elixir. Maybe the startup times are not perfect for every use case, but Elixir is extremely versatile. It’s easy to add dependencies, debug, iterate and even write tests, all in a single file! I believe, due to LiveBook, it really hits its stride in recent years; the ecosystem leans heavily into ergonomic developer experience and great out-of-the-box defaults (Req is amazing!). In few lines of code, you can connect to Postgres, send HTTP requests or start HTTP server.
For my own use cases I’ve written scripts for displaying weather(focus only on rain, v. important for dog walks when your dog hates rain) in i3status-rust, transforming various CSV files from bank exports into beancount format, or creating Telegram bots.
Well, if it were that simple, I’d just do echo "Hello world" and skip Elixir, but then there’d be no point in writing this blog post, right? So, I have another, a bit more involved and what may seem like over-complicated template. It’s a starting point for more complex scripts, and I can either remove some of the parts I don’t need or start extending it.
