Modernizing the Shell: The Dush Scripting Language

The biggest problem with shell scripting today is that it doesn't feel like programming. It feels like incantation. You're not writing logic; you're writing strings that happen to be interpreted as logic. Dush changes that.

In Dush, variables are first-class citizens. We use the @ sigil to denote any language-level entity. This solves the "is this a string or a variable?" problem that plagues Bash.

EXPANDCOPY
bash
# Bash
VAR="hello"
echo $VAR   # Is it $VAR or ${VAR}?

# Dush
@var = "hello"
echo @var   # Unambiguous.

Dush isn't just strings. It supports integers, floats, booleans, arrays, and maps natively.

EXPANDCOPY
bash
@items = ["apple", "banana", "cherry"]
@user = {"name": "fezcode", "role": "admin"}

loop (@x : @items) {
    echo "Item: @x"
}

Why should we have to pipe to tr or awk just to change a string's case? Dush brings modern method syntax to the shell:

EXPANDCOPY
bash
@path = "/usr/local/bin"
@parts = @path.split("/")
echo @parts.join("-")

This keeps your logic inside the shell's memory space, making scripts faster and much easier to read.

Forget the clunky case statements of old. Dush features a modern match block with wildcard support:

EXPANDCOPY
bash
match (@status) {
    case 0 { echo "Success!" }
    case 1 { echo "Warning..." }
    case _ { echo "Unknown error: @status" }
}

Dush supports procedures with local scoping and parameters. They feel like Go functions but work like shell commands.

EXPANDCOPY
bash
proc greet(@name, @shout=false) {
    let @msg = "Hello, @name!"
    if (@shout) {
        echo @msg.upper()
    } else {
        echo @msg
    }
}

greet("Dush", true)

Dush isn't trying to be Bash. It's trying to be what a shell would look like if it were designed today, with 50 years of programming language theory at its back.

It's time to stop scripting and start programming.

Join the revolution: https://github.com/fezcode/dush