rndm - A Random Number Generator (for a Bashly tutorial)

[meleu]

https://github.com/meleu/rndm

This is a (toy) project I created as a demonstration of how to get started with Bashly, showing some of its core features.

I want to write a more "textual" tutorial, but for now I'm only working on the project and making commits with a short explanation about what I'm doing. In the README there's a concatenation of the commit messages for those willing to see how it's evolving.

Overview

The basic idea is to create a project like this:

1. create a random number generator called rndm (no fancy logic: just a simple echo "$RANDOM")
2. get a random number from random.org
3. provide --options to manage how the numbers are created (and deal with the related complexity)
4. convert the random number generation to a subcommand: rndm number
5. add another subcommand: rndm password - the random password generator

In the path of achieving this I plan to address several important Bashly features.

Detailed Plan

In this issue I share a more detailed plan of what I want to address in the project/tutorial.

Any feedback and/or suggestions are very welcome. ❤️

[DannyBen]

Nice. I am sorry that I am going there instantly - but the .gitignore is blown way out of proportion. I see that it is some sort of template provided by toptal? Seems like a bad practice to me.

Especially in your case, where it is a "commit driven" guide - it is the first file in the first commit.

.gitignore should include the minimal files and folders that should actually be ignored in the project. Anything else, OS, environment or user specific (I am looking at you .DS_Store), should be in the user's global .gitignore as they should never be committed anywhere. Not to mention that it includes all sorts of patterns from any possible project types...

This is not a complaint to you of course - just something that instantly popped and took over all my attention...😏

[meleu]

Good point! 😅

As an immediate action I've removed the mention to the "First commit" from the README.

By the way, my intention is not exactly to keep it as a "commit driven" guide. That's just a temporary approach while I'm still slowly working on the project. Once the project reach the point where subcommands are introduced, I want to write a more "fluid" text.

Thanks for the feedback. 🙂

Hopefully you can recover your energy drained by the overloaded .gitignore and judge if my plan listed here has a good sequence of concepts being introduced. 🙏

[DannyBen]

Hopefully you can recover your energy drained by the overloaded .gitignore and judge...

Yes, I promise I will once I gained my strength back :)

[DannyBen]

At first look - the plan looks fine. Some pointers:

1. The dependencies bullet is missing a checkbox
2. What about arguments? Not covered?
3. Not sure if it is planned as part of the initial tutorial section - but the basic concept of:
   • Create the YAML file (bashly init)
   • Run bashly so it generates the placeholder "partials" for you (bashly generate)
   • Update the partials with your code (how to use $args etc)
   • Generate the final script (bashly generate)
   • Rinse and repeat (or bashly generate --watch)

[meleu]

What about arguments? Not covered?

I see this as missing topic too. 😔

The very first idea for this project was using rndm NUM as a way to provide the maximum number. But as soon as I thought about the possibility of also passing a minimum value, I noticed it could be inconsistent to use something like: rndm --min 50 100.

I'm currently out of ideas about a feature that could be used to cover arguments in a reasonable way for this program.

Ideas I considered (and how I discarded):

• amount of numbers to be generated -> --amount <NUM> looks better
• arbitrary set of characters to be used to generate a password -> --chars <STRING> looks better

---

An idea I had while writing this reply...

rndm line <FILE> - get a random line from a file (e.g. a collection of quotes).

Any other ideas are welcome (even nonsense ones, this is the brainstorming phase 😉).

[DannyBen]

rndm file [DIR] [--recursive]