# Scripting in Cicada
The goal of cicada is to be useful daily use shell and replace Bash. But
it does not intend to compete with shells like zsh, fish, etc. It keep
[KISS Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle) in mind.
For scripting, cicada won't introduce a full featured scripting
language as bash did. For complex scripting job, I would recommend you
to use bash (and call them with `$ bash xxx.sh` in cicada), or dynamic
scripting languages like Python. Scripting with cicada should be only used
in simple cases.
## Introduction
Currently its only support put commands (or pipes) line by line into a file:
File content of `~/hello.sh`:
```
#!/usr/local/bin/cicada
echo hello scripting
echo "the args are: $@"
echo $3 $1 $2
date
echo bye
```
We can make this file as executable with:
```
$ chmod +x ~/hello.sh
```
Then there are two method to run it:
**a) Run it directly**
```
$ ~/hello.sh foo bar baz
```
**b) Pass it to cicada**
```
$ cicada ~/hello.sh foo bar baz
```
Either way, the output looks like this:
```
hello scripting
runing /home/mitnk/hello.sh with args: foo bar baz
baz foo bar
Sat Apr 27 17:14:36 CST 2019
bye
```
## The source Builtin
> See also [the source builtin](https://github.com/mitnk/cicada/blob/master/docs/built-in-cmd.md#source).
Command like `$ cicada foo.sh` would create a new session and run the commands
in file `foo.sh`. If you want to run then in current shell session, you
can run it with `$ source foo.sh`.
## Using Builtins
In scripts, you could also use cicada's
[builtins](https://github.com/mitnk/cicada/blob/master/docs/built-in-cmd.md).
For example, you can include extra RC configs at the end of `~/.cicadarc` file:
([RC file](https://github.com/mitnk/cicada/blob/master/docs/rc-file.md)
itself is also a valid cicada script).
```
# my cicada rc file: ~/.cicadarc
alias ll='ls -lh'
# other settings
...
# including some extra settings for this host only:
source ~/.cicadarc_local
```
## Functions is not Supported Yet
Supporing functions in cicada is in the to do list. But as said in beginning
of this doc, it could be also a simplified thing.