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geophile
osh
Python2013–2023
geophile / osh

osh

Osh (Object SHell) is a command-line and API toolkit combining cluster access, database access, and data slicing and dicing. Sort of like awk and cssh morsels wrapped up in a Python crust.

Command LineData & Databases
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
2Distinct people
15Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
59GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Osh (Object SHell) is a command-line and API toolkit combining cluster access, database access, and data slicing and dicing. Sort of like awk and cssh morsels wrapped up in a Python crust.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 6:36:16 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year15 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-02-05 21:32:12 UTC to 2023-10-24 15:24:51 UTC.

01232013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2023

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303

What Hacker News says

2 sources
geophile·Aug 22, 2018
Along the same lines: https://github.com/geophile/osh Osh (Object shell) is a command-line utility for running sequences of operations connected by a pipe-like construct. Objects are piped, not strings. Included in the sequence of operations may be remote sequences of command, which run on all nodes of a cluster. For example, if you have configured a cluster named foo, then you can get the pid and commandline of every node of your cluster like this: osh @foo [ ps ^ f 'p: (p.pid, p.commandline)' ] $ - osh: Invokes the interpreter - @foo [ ... ]: Run the bracketed commands on every node of cluster foo. - ps: The osh ps command, which yields a stream of Process objects. - ^: The osh pipe symbol - f: Function application. The function in this case takes a Process p, and returns a tuple containing the process's pid and command line. - $:
Read the rest
Print the contents of the input stream, one per line. This is a python tool, so the stuff piped between operations are python objects.
In PowerShell Remoting
geophile·Apr 16, 2018
APL, (which is the array language I had some exposure to), had three interesting characteristics: 1. It implements an algebra: Operators take arrays as input and yield arrays as output. 2. The special characters bound to those array operators. 3. It is functional. #2 definitely gave APL programs a distinct and elegant personality, but probably didn't help with widespread adoption. But #1 and #3 are powerful ideas, and have showed up in other forms. SETL was a set-oriented language from the late 70s/early 80s. I took compiler courses from the guy behind it, R. B. K. Dewar (of Spitbol fame). Fantastic teacher. SETL programs were concise and powerful like APL programs, exactly because of #1 and #3. Later in my grad school career, I got into relational algebra, which also has these characteristics. My advisor was T. H. Merrett who engaged on
Read the rest
a many-years, quixotic quest to explore relational algebra as the basis of a general-purpose programming language. I didn't buy into all of that, but as a database guy, I find relational algebra to be powerful and useful on a day-to-day basis. Finally, I really like functional stream approaches as a great way to bridge set-at-a-time programming (for lack of a better term) with ordinary, low-level programming. Java 8 streams and lambdas is a great (if flawed) example of this approach. Even Map/Reduce is, under the vast amounts of complexity. I like this approach so much that I built a command-line tool, osh (http://github.com/geophile/osh) based on it. The idea there is the Unix idea of composing simple commands using pipes, except in osh, the pipes carry streams of Python objects. And the commands that operate on the objects in these streams are Python. E.g., to print the pids and commands of processes whose commandline contains "emacs": $ osh ps ^ select 'p: "emacs" in p.commandline' ^ f 'p: (p.pid, p.commandline)' $ (37268, '/usr/bin/emacs24 ') (42107, 'emacs ') (63758, '/usr/bin/python /usr/bin/osh ps ^ select p: "emacs" in p.commandline ^ f p: (p.pid, p.commandline) $ ') (113605, '/usr/bin/emacs24 ')
In Papers from the Lost Culture of Array Languages (2011)

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