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by jaqui

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which of the many shells do you use?
why this over the ubiquitous bash?
( if not bash )
what benefits does the shell offer over bash?

12 replies

by choppit

It's bash for me, purely because it's the default on my distros and I've never had the time or inclination to try others.

by jaqui

that if you ever do decide to build a kernel, you have to have bash, or it isn't going to work. :)

by stress junkie

I use bash on Linux in order to remain familiar with it. Since the boot scripts are written in bash it seems like a good idea to have a grasp of this shell's syntax.

I use tcsh on Solaris because I write a lot more scripts on the Solaris machines. I strongly prefer the syntax of tcsh. It just makes more sense to me.

by jaqui

that the distro you use doesn't allow you to have a shell different from bash?
if the default shell was tcsh then they should have tcsh bootscripts.

you would still need bash, for working on the kernel or modules. but you can run linux without having bash running.

by stress junkie

Now you've got me thinking. That's always dangerous. I could only imagine that what I wrote means what you said if there were a language with all of the same words of English but all of the words had different meanings. One of us hasn't been taking his medication. :-)

by jdclyde

Bash on the linux boxes and Ksh on the single SCO Box.

Bash because it is default and just works well.

The Korn shell gave many of the features now taken for granted with the newer Bash. This is an older box running legacy apps. Don't touch it or you might break it!

Needless to say, when it is time to move the apps to a newer server, the apps will all get ported over to a linux server as we all know what has happened to SCO. (figures too, because that is what I got my cert in! MACE )

SCO USED to have the greatest support site around. If you had a problem the answer was right on their site! After the Caldera buyout they wanted to make a fortune off the SCO license AND the support information. Now they don't have either and we will never setup another SCO box.

by jaqui

that's what I was asking.

you said that your linux bootscripts are bash scripts so you use bash, also it keeps you current with bash scripting.

but whenever I've used a different shell the bootscripts were for the default shell, not bash.

by wes_unix

I tend to use the system default or the shell which will be the most portable without having to load anything extra on the system, so

Linux - BASH - default/portability
Solaris - ksh - portability
HP-UX - posix - default/portability - posix is almost always compatable with ksh too.
AIX - ksh - portability

Even when I am working in BASH for example I still tend to only write in a way that is portable and thus could be run in ksh or posix too. So, normally I do not use any of the "special" features of the shell.

Just my 2 cents worth.

by jaqui

ksh a bash plus shell?
with all the same features of bash, plus extras?
I haven't used it myself, but I seem to remember reading the description of it and it said it's capable of using any bash script as-is.

by masinick

One might argue on this differently, depending on which implementations of Ksh and Bash that you have locally installed, but from what I can tell, Bash has long passed up Ksh, which as far as I can tell, has been dormant for years on features.

The shell with the largest set of features that I know of is zsh. I would argue that Bash has plenty of features inherited from that shell as well and is more than rich enough in capabilities, definitely for every day use.

Zsh has a mass of features found in Bash, Tcsh, and all of the other powerful shells. I find it to be a bit overwhelming, and I have no need for all of the features it offers. Bash has more than enough features for me, and I can even make due with a smaller shell, as long as it has UNIX System V Bourne Shell equivalent features (The Korn Shell is fine in this respect).

by masinick

I will use any shell that descends from the original Bourne Shell, but if possible, I will not use that aged original Bourne Shell for only one reason - it lacks history and easy command navigation when used interactively. However, when programming, scripting, or otherwise using shells, I try, whenever possible, to adopt conventions and techniques that would also work in any Bourne compatible shell: sh5 (the UNIX System V Bourne Shell, not the original UNIX Version 6 shell), ksh, the Korn Shell, Bash, zsh, or pdksh.

These practices echo what Wes wrote about a few years ago, but since shells and aliases were recently mentioned in a Tech Republic mailing, I thought it would be worthwhile to mention these common best practices again.

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