Wondering if I should use JAVA or UNIX scripts to develop a program

pedrosan · 05-20-2004, 04:35 AM

Hi

I need to develop a program that browse a file hierarchy, concatenate and modify XML or HTML files in it.

I am wondering if it is better to use JAVA or UNIX scripts to do so.

My choice criteria are:
- The development ease
- The speed of program's functioning

Does anybody know which one is the best?

Thanks for your help.

PEDROSAN

khtse · 05-20-2004, 05:41 AM

I suppose development ease is strongly correlated to your expertise in any language, so that depends whether you're better at Java or Shell Scripting.

But I would presume that for simply file manipulation tasks, the Shell Scripting option would be much quicker to hack and run. OTOH, if you'll be developing this XML part of your program later, it might be better to start with Java (with the XML).

M2C
Karhoo

Hko · 05-20-2004, 09:12 AM

Editing XML file doesn't sound like a job for a shell script really, maybe unless you execute XSLT scripts from that.

Python, Perl, or Java sound more suitable for this. However it depends how complex the things are you want to do are. If it's just putting some easy-to-find parts of some files together, a shell script wit maybe some sed or awk commands may be the easiest thing to use.

Like khtse already said, it also denpends on your expertise in the different languages.

andmalc · 05-21-2004, 10:19 PM

For ease of development, nothing beats Python. It's extremly versitile, but not as fast as Java or C.

Ruby is another good high level language that' quite similar to Python but with more of a shell scripting feel to it. It's perhaps even more nicely designed than Python not nearly as well documented, at least in Englisht.

Python or Ruby are fun to use and you get a lot more done for the same amount of code than with the 'serious' languages.

Shah · 05-22-2004, 07:35 AM

Hmmm, well you can get alot more done using visual basic on widnows...

Well I recommend Java for editing xml files than to using unix scripts or shell. Thats cus I am used to java in regards to I/O. As Hko stated it depends on your expertise.