Writing shell scripts that suckless

Compare http://static.natalian.org/2009-12-12/w3c.sh.txt with:

• http://static.natalian.org/2009-12-12/list_positive.sh.txt
• http://static.natalian.org/2009-12-12/list_negative.sh.txt
• http://static.natalian.org/2009-12-12/test_positive.sh.txt
• http://static.natalian.org/2009-12-12/test_negative.sh.txt

The original 100 line script might have been short, though it tried to do too many things at once. It was also too dependent on http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/ when it need not be.

It takes a genius to break up a problem into small and very maintainable components.