punkshell/README.md

##  punkshell - an alternative Tcl Shell

BSD license

2023-08  Note: this is **alpha** level software and still highly experimental.


### Features
- default ansi color output - toggle with 'colour on' and 'colour off'
- experimental functional language features. (will not be performant until more work is done on script compilation)
    e.g  
    `var_pipe_output.=  var_list.= list a b c |> string toupper`
- easy execution of externals commands with return of stdout, stderr and the exitcode of the process
   - `run <comand> ...`
       (return exitcode of process - and allows process writes to stderr/stdout to appear in console as they occur)
   - `runout <command> ...` 
       (return stdout of process - no output until completion) 
   - `runerr <command> ...`
       (return stderr of process - no output until completion)
   - `runx  <command> ...`
       (return a dict of stdout stderr exitcode - no output until completion)



#### very unripe parts:
- commandline options - in need of urgent work to document and lock down specifics - in particular: punkshell somescript.tcl needs a fix to emit errors.
- shellfilter - api is clumsy
- scriptlib - will likely be reorganised/pruned significantly