It’s almost the end of October, and that means I have to switch linux distros (as I’m doing every month). It’ll take a while for me to set everything back up again. I was really hoping I could get this script into a functional state before I tear everything apart and have to put it back together again.

But unfortunately the script is proving to be much more complicated than expected. Well, maybe not more than expected, since I kind of expected this was going to take a while, going in blind, but certainly more than I hoped. Little frustrating things keep popping up to highlight that bash is just unlike anything I am used to. I get the feeling my lack of understanding some of the very basics are really tripping me up here.

The main things I’m a little stuck on right now are 1) trying to figure out the syntax of how to include a newline in my delimiter (so I’m only splitting up actual scripts on lines that start with ‘scrp’ and not when ‘scrp’ is in a random debug string somewhere) and 2) just all the messiness of handling how to to escape quotes (but only sometimes). Basic enough things in most languages, right? But the nature of bash is painfully unintuitive to me.

I’m weighing my options right now. I could drop this whole thing and redo it in python or something else far easier to handle, or just keep slogging through it and maybe learn something in the process.

The more excited I get about doing other Creatures things (I’ve been a little over-caffeinated and full of ideas lately) the more I want to just give up on bash for now and do it the easier way so that I can get moving on literally everything else. But I am a stubborn creature. It’s so difficult for me to give up on something, especially when I know there’s a solution I just haven’t found yet.

I’m probably not going to make much headway on anything in November anyway (NaNoWriMo and all), so I guess I’ll just see what inspiration strikes me when it does. That’s probably the best way to go about this anyway if I want to avoid burnout.

Lastly, in case it’s of interest: Occasionally I stream myself trying to code this stuff on Twitch-- the same channel where I used to stream Live Nornish Action years ago. It’s not terribly interesting, but in short bursts it helps me avoid getting distracted (sort of an ‘on the clock’ mindset if that makes any sense).

I’m thinking tomorrow I’ll reload the OS and go from there. It’s a little early, but I’m off work and it might be the last span of free time I have for a while, so... we’ll see how it goes.