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Unix Operating Systems Software

Which Shell Do You Prefer? 138

Posted by Cliff from the it's-about-time-we-posed-this-one dept.
Pascal de Bruijn asks: "I recently started to use NetBSD, the first thing I noticed was that it didn't have a command-line history. So I immediately wanted to switch my shell, being on BSD my first instinct was to change to tcsh, but many people told me it wasn't any good. Others recommended zsh. I would really like to hear your opinions about shells." The submitter is particularly interested in shell memory usage, and the features you like...and dislike...from the current options that are available, today.
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Which Shell Do You Prefer? More

Which Shell Do You Prefer?

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  • Korn Shell

    • bash (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by pizza_milkshake ( 580452 )
      it's sexy

      • Re:bash (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SN74S181 ( 581549 )
        bash is an extend-and-embrace version of /bin/sh: it encourages people to write broken shell scripts.

        On some of the GNU systems, i.e. Linux, /bin/bash is the automatic replacement for a nonexistent /bin/sh, so people write what they think are generic shell scripts, but carelessly include bash-only features. Then their scripts won't work on systems without /bin/bash.

        bash is sorta like Microsoft's Java implementation in that way.

        • Re:bash (Score:4, Insightful)

          by divbyzero ( 23176 ) on Saturday March 22, 2003 @01:27PM (#5574434) Journal

          Whatever the intentions of Bash's authors with regard to "embrace and extend" tactics, it can be used perfectly safely, and may well be convenient for the poster.

          Bash is one of those programs which acts differently depending on the filename of its executable. When invoked from a copy or a link named /bin/sh, it emulates the traditional Bourne shell without GNU extensions.

          Thus, always write your scripts with the traditional #!/bin/sh shebang. If Bash is masquerading as Bourne, it won't hurt you that way. You can still benefit from Bash's extensions for interactive use (such as command editing and history) by setting your shell to /bin/bash via chsh.

        • How on earth was this modded up?

          This is a complete troll - there is absolutely no comparison between a closed system specifically *designed* to provide incompatible extensions and a much superior shell which has become the defacto standard for *many* years.

          Can you find me a platform that doesn't have bash available, but does have sh? If you can, you have the source, you can port it yourself.

          Do you suppose you can compile Win32 code on a Win3.1 compiler?

          That about describes the generation leap. I'd say

          • Can you find me a platform that doesn't have bash available, but does have sh?

            Defining 'available' as 'included with the base distribution' (meaning, excluding rpm, pkg_add, etc).

            Solaris; at least up to 8 (at least, it isn't on the cd I downloaded.)
            NetBSD, as already mentioned.

            Do you suppose you can compile Win32 code on a Win3.1 compiler?

            Depends on the code, and wether or not you
            A)Are using Borland 4.5 or not (maybe openwatcom too?)
            B)Have installed win32s (included w/ Borland 4.5)

            Did I just get tr

    • Re:That's easy... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mirabilos ( 219607 )
      You basically use the /bin/ksh Korn Shell because it
      is part of the base system. It's the pdksh, not the
      ast-ksh, and it has basically every feature from GNU
      bash you would need (except man page and password
      auto-completion *g*). And it's free as in BSD licence.

      On GNU/Linux, where I usually have the choice between
      GNU bash and tcsh, I prefer bash (until I get to install
      pdksh) because it's a bourne shell (well, more or less).

      On BSD, however, I urge you to not install GNU bash,
      especially not as the root shell, b


      • - it's dynamically linked and resides in /usr/local/bin,
        whereas /bin/ksh and /bin/csh are statically linked
        (system rescue issues)

        Don't use a shell where it dosen't belong. System recovery should be done by sash [debian.org]. If all your utilities are shared libraries, other shells won't help much.

      • - it's dynamically linked and resides in /usr/local/bin

        You can build it statically, and you can put it where you want. On the FreeBSD machines I used to administer, this is what I did. Built it static once, copied to /sbin. Don't confuse bad administration (dynamically linked root shell, on a file system thats not mounted on /) with bad Bash policies.

        You recommend ksh, then say stick with the shells the system provides. They provide ksh the same way they provide Bash, in the ports system.

        Pick whate

  • command line history (Score:5, Informative)

    by eXtro ( 258933 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:39PM (#5570087) Homepage
    did you try enabling it, it's off by default

    set history=1000
    - or maybe -
    history = 1000
    - or possibly -
    set history 1000

    I've never seen a shell without command line history, but I've logged into a lot of places where it wasn't turned on by default.

  • I just use Bash (Score:2, Insightful)

    by streettech ( 637063 )
    Bash baby!
    • Please, anything but bash - that Linux lump of shite...
      • Linux lump of shite...

        Yes, I know this is a troll, but Bash isn't a Linux lump of shite, but a GNU lup of shite, written for the barely out of vaporware after 20 years GNU HURD. It just happens that they picked up the shell, and it's pretty much the Linux default. It has it s problems, but its my default shell for a lot of reasons.

  • conch (Score:4, Funny)

    by dynoman7 ( 188589 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:41PM (#5570112) Homepage
    nuff said

  • Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:43PM (#5570140)

    I recently started to use NetBSD, the first thing I noticed was that it didn't have a command-line history.

    It? Command-line history isn't a feature of an operating system, it's a feature of a shell.

    my first instinct was to change to tcsh, but many people told me it wasn't any good.

    Read csh programming considered harmful [faqs.org]. It's not really sensible to write shell scripts using one shell and use another, so steer clear of csh.

    Many people like zsh for it's completion routines, but I believe bash has similar facilities by now.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AtrN ( 87501 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @08:14PM (#5570893) Homepage
      Command-line history isn't a feature of an operating system, it's a feature of a shell.

      It can be a feature of the operating system. With pty's you can insert arbitrary filters into the input stream allowing consistent editing across all programs that do terminal input. I've used ile in the past to do this. The benefits include one editor interface and programs not needing to know about and include the editor. There's a trade off (of course), without knowledge of the editor the programs can't tailor it to specific uses, such as programmable completion. It could be but the editors need to provide facilities to allow such control and they don't AFAIK. It would nice if they did.

    • It? Command-line history isn't a feature of an operating system, it's a feature of a shell.

      VMS... single line recall is built into the terminal device driver.

      Anything more than a single line, that's up to the application to handle :)

    • It's not really sensible to write shell scripts using one shell and use another, so steer clear of csh.



      poppycock

      I use csh all day long for my interactive sessions but use rc [le.ac.uk] for my shell programming.

      So pray, what's wrong with doing that?

      I get the features I want from a CLI and I get the features I want from the shell programming language for scripts.

    • Thus spake AC:
      Command-line history isn't a feature of an operating system, it's a feature of a shell.
      Not all operating systems separate the operating system from the shell. That separation was actually one of the original UNIX's celebrated features.

  • I prefer... (Score:4, Funny)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:46PM (#5570172) Journal
    Conch shells.

    If your plane crashes on a deserted island, and you get the conch shell, you 0\/\/n3rs the island.

  • bash (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:48PM (#5570186) Homepage Journal
    I like bash. It's common, fairly standard. It has history and tab completion. That's all I really need or use. I have it in linux/solaris/cygwin so I'm rarely forced to use something else. Never really cared or needed to use something else.
  • Personally, I prefer Emacs, because VI doesn't have enough features.

    Actually, wait, I prefer Gnome, because I dislike KDE's philosophy in duplicating technologoies that already exist, but in the "KDE" style...

    Enterprise vs. the Battlestar Galactica? Enterprise, baby! Battlestars always catch on fire, as if they were made of rice-paper.

    No wait, wait... this is about shells. Gosh, I've never used a shell. What is it?
    • Of course I realise you're joking, but Emacs actually does come with a built-in shell, eshell.

      What rocks about it is that it's written in Emacs lisp, so you can use it on anything Emacs runs on. It's very nice to be able to fire up a Unix-like shell on Windows for those of use who prefer a cli approach and have never adapted to the MS-DOS tradition.

      Still though, when I am in a Unix environment I like zsh for my login shell, which still has a more features.

  • I use gdb (Score:4, Funny)

    by sigwinch ( 115375 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:52PM (#5570220) Homepage
    Hands down the most powerful shell there is.
  • What a dumb question. Ask Slashdot is really going downhill. Newbies need to use Google like us 1337 users.

    Shells [freebsd.org]

    • This is something that bugs me from the *nix community

      Sure he could google for shells - But does that give him end user opinions in an interactive format?

      No

      That is why he asks - To find out what YOU think

  • zsh (Score:3, Informative)

    by dhall ( 1252 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:53PM (#5570227)
    I originally chose this shell back in '92 for the right hand prompt. A 'spiff' feature for a shell chocked full of features. It was also the first shell to have a truly programmable completion. It has all the interactive add-on's for tcsh, with the base template built off of Korn Shell (so you don't have issues with scripting in something separate from a Bourne derivative).

    The z-shell is so filled with features at this point, it's nearly become the "emacs" of shells, and yet, it's memory footprint for the same tasks is smaller than either bash or tcsh.

  • bash (Score:2)

    by dacarr ( 562277 )
    I like bash, but I'm biased. I've always been partial to bash and emacs.

    My wife thinks I'm insane, but I'll show her! I'll show them all!

  • Which Shell? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Captain Large Face ( 559804 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:54PM (#5570236) Homepage

    Royal Dutch?

    "When you absolutely, positively have to murder every Ogoni protester in the Niger Delta, accept no substitute."
  • While features like a commandline history are nice, while you are at it, why not try something like the MUD Shell [xirium.com] or the New Adventure shell [sourceforge.net]? Instead of some plain black, dull shell, spice unix up with a gameplay like feeling. Interestingly, The MUD shell, was inspired [xirium.com] by a posting at... Slashdot!
  • Tab and Shift-Tab to *cycle* thru filenames, along with a hotkey to toggle between long and short filenames, just rocks when stuck on a Windows (2K/XP) box.

    When on a *nix system, bash.

    • cmd.exe on 2k/xp all the way, it's default and you know it's there :)

      seriously though, zsh is my shell of choice right now. bash, of course, is my second choice.
  • Geez, people! [slashdot.org] ;-)

  • Bash is the One True Shell, ksh is very close (Score:5, Informative)

    by afabbro ( 33948 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:00PM (#5570293) Homepage
    Yes, I'm (mostly, as much as ever) serious.

    When picking a shell, you should consider:

    • how easy it is to work with interactively
    • how easy it is to code (yes, I write 99% of my stuff in perl or whatever, but you will need to script some day, mark my words...if nothing else, system startup scripts for Solaris, AIX, etc.)
    • how standard is it on what type of Unices you work on.

    The candidates:

    sh is too primitive in terms of user features, period. No one uses the Bourne shell if they can help it.

    csh/tcsh...well, google for "csh Programming Considered Harmful" to see its many internal bugs. Also, most of the major Unices don't use it (Solaris, AIX, Linux - I guess *BSD might still) for their system stuff. If it's not considered a good scripting platform AND most Unices don't use it for their scripts...

    zsh - From what I've read, a good shell, but very nonstandard. Do you really want to lug a shell around and install it (and set up /etc/shells or whatever each time, etc.) for every machine you log into?

    ksh - sh scripting with all the good interactive features. A really solid shell and a very good choice. All the sh goodness with the t/csh interactive features added.

    bash - I think bash is a little better than ksh because some of its interactive features are better. Tab-completion is better than ESC-\. The way the shell handles tab completion is better (X possibilities, do you want to see?) Lots of little things like that. Benefits greatly from reimplementing ksh. Installed by default on all Linux distros (except tiny niche players) and Solaris since Solaris 8...easy to build and install on AIX or *BSD (and HP-UX I'd guess, I don't know)

    bash is the best shell in my opinion and I have no qualms about defending it. ksh is a reasonable second choice and some people prefer it. zsh may be in the running but never caught on widely. Everything else is inferior.

    • A few more details (Score:5, Informative)

      by devphil ( 51341 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:24PM (#5570496) Homepage


      Some random facts:

      • Anyone spending more than a brief amount of time on a *nix system should learn how to use the basic sh commands, even if it's not their login shell? Why? Because 1) most system-level scripts are written in sh, and 2) when major programming languages perform a "shell" call, e.g., system(), it uses sh to do the work.
      • There is a POSIX specification of sh which cleans up all the wacky historical bugs. The resulting shell is actually ksh.
      • The csh/tcsh family were originally meant to be more friendly to programmers (a C-style syntax), but it all seriously backfired. Every other shell allows the user to write subroutines. Not csh. Instead, you get a goto command. No, I'm not joking.
      • tcsh is just some user-friendly features added to csh, but the annoyances and lack of comparative features just doesn't make up for it.

      The only real choices today as far as user login shells go are bash 2.x, ksh (ksh93, not ksh88), and zsh, all of which continue to cross-pollinate good ideas.

      • It has been something like twenty years since I looked into the Joy(*) shell, to see if I should spend the energy to try to master it.

        As I recall, one of the drawbacks to writing shell scripts(**) in the Joy shell was serious awkwardness in redirecting a program's standard error. And redirecting of higher file descriptors was not possible. Although I can't recall every seeing a shell procedure that used this feature.

        Rob Mashey wrote a shell for PWB/UNIX (the "Programmer's Workbench UNIX"), which was ab

        • I made a couple of mistakes. I called him Rob Mashey. Actually, it is John R. Mashey. And he felt the PWB shell he worked on was still a Thompson shell. I found a reference where he graciously said he was the third of three people to work on what he disliked hearing called "the Mashey shell".
    • The parents subject pretty much says it all. One other issuee is licensing, I was surprised to find that bash wasnt installed by default when I installed OpenBSD, until I realised one of the aims of *BSD is to avoid GPL software.
      To be honest, the only real difference I noticed between the two was that ksh didnt support my nice luverly coloured bash prompt (which probably says more about how I use the shell than how different they are).
      However, tab completion worked in ksh, unlike what I took the parent to b
    • Not bad, but here are my own feelings.

      I've never even used sh (just bash...)

      csh/tcsh are significantly less popular than the others -- their main users are BSD fans.

      zsh is relatively heavyweight, but I really like it. If there's a feature, zsh has it. I particularly like colorized tab completion. It's got a lot of bash and ksh's features combined. It's true that it's less common than bash.

      bash is the most common, easily. It's a pretty safe choice.

      I haven't been too impressed with other shells. pe

    • csh/tcsh...well, google for "csh Programming Considered Harmful" to see its many internal bugs. Also, most of the major Unices don't use it (Solaris, AIX, Linux - I guess *BSD might still) for their system stuff. If it's not considered a good scripting platform AND most Unices don't use it for their scripts...

      No one said the shell you use has to be the one you program in. I prefer to use tcsh for my interactive shell (it does everything that I need it to), but use sh for shell scripting (since it's on e

      • No one said the shell you use has to be the one you program in. I prefer to use tcsh for my interactive shell (it does everything that I need it to), but use sh for shell scripting (since it's on every platform I work on).

        True, true. There are times though that one has to type on the prompt things like:

        $ for fname in $( cmd | sed | awk | grep ) ; do \
        stuff "${fname}" ; done

        The scriptability of the shell right there on the command prompt, is probably the only reason I use bash as my login shell


        • Ditto.

          At one point I was a staunch supporter of tcsh as a login shell. I had read about and experienced the ugliness of *csh for scripting, but I still preferred tcsh's immensely good interactive interface.

          But every now and then, I want to do a quick loop or some other simple scripting construct right there on the commandline, and I would actually run some bourne derivatite from my tcsh commandline just to do it and then drop back. Eventually I got more and more annoyed with that, and along the way Bash
    • csh/tcsh...

      I'm really disappointed that this is the default shell in OS X. Using tcsh is downright painful for anyone used to real tab-completion (e.g., zsh, bash).

      zsh - From what I've read, a good shell, but very nonstandard. Do you really want to lug a shell around and install it (and set up /etc/shells or whatever each time, etc.) for every machine you log into? ...

      bash - I think bash is a little better than ksh...

      If you're a bash user for the interactive benefits (i.e., tab completion, etc.), then you should really consider converting to zsh. It will take you a day, but you'll be glad you spent the time and you'll never go back (unless you're forced to, in which case it will be painful).

      Aside from the "embrace and extend" approach of these shells that a previous poster mentioned, zsh wins by a light year compared to anything else, especially with its tab completion libraries (imagine being able to hit TAB after typing cvs to get a list of the subcommands). Not only that, but zsh history/command-line editing are far superior (with a true emacs-style kill ring and real multi-line command editing). The learning curve can be steep, but there are plenty of tutorials out there to get you started. zsh is the power user's shell of choice if you spend any time in the shell (this is coming from a six-year bash zealot).
      • I'm also a zsh fan and highly recommend it; but think it's relevant to this discussion to point out that people should be very cautious about tinkering with root's login shell:

        A lot of shells are not useable in single-user mode. This means that if you change root's shell, you risk getting yourself an unusable system if a later problem forces you to boot in single user mode. (To check if this is the case on your system, boot into single-user and try to start the shell at the first prompt you get.)

        So my

      • I'm really disappointed that this is the default shell in OS X. Using tcsh is downright painful for anyone used to real tab-completion (e.g., zsh, bash).

        Neither tcsh nor bash offer anything other than basic tab completion in a default installation. Have a look at my ~/.complete [endbracket.net] for some ideas. You can integrate these completion commands in your ~/.cshrc or source ~/.complete from your ~/.cshrc.

        zsh wins by a light year compared to anything else, especially with its tab completion libraries (imagine

      • Nope, bash has that too. (Score:4, Informative)

        by devphil ( 51341 ) on Sunday March 23, 2003 @09:59PM (#5580726) Homepage


        Programmable completion has been in bash for a while now. See the original project page [freshmeat.net] for more, or use the debian bash package, which includes the completion libraries by default.

        I actually had to disable the cvs-subcommand-autocomplete. I would try to complete the name of an actual file, and the cvs-completion would fire... generating network traffic to the CVS server... taking forever... when all I wanted was a local filename.

    • hugging zsh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by epine ( 68316 )

      If you try zsh and you don't think it is worth the bother to lug zsh around, you didn't have much need for zsh in the first place.

      I lug zsh everywhere. Do I really want to? Absolutely.

    • Re:Bash is the One True Shell, ksh is very close (Score:4, Informative)

      by eyez ( 119632 ) <eyez@babbli c a .net> on Saturday March 22, 2003 @02:02AM (#5572740) Homepage
      csh/tcsh...well, google for "csh Programming Considered Harmful" to see its many internal bugs. Also, most of the major Unices don't use it (Solaris, AIX, Linux - I guess *BSD might still) for their system stuff. If it's not considered a good scripting platform AND most Unices don't use it for their scripts...

      Um. I'm sorry, but I don't see how (t)csh scripting equates to it's value as a login shell. Yes, it can be ugly to script in csh, mainly due to it's lack of function support, but it's a very nice shell to use for day-to-day use. It's completion system is extremely sane, and it has lots of extra convenience setups, and many cool extras.

      zsh - From what I've read, a good shell, but very nonstandard. Do you really want to lug a shell around and install it (and set up /etc/shells or whatever each time, etc.) for every machine you log into?

      Zsh is actually my favorite shell. The way I have it set up, if I run into a machine where zsh isn't available, I have a backup tcsh config which works very similarly to my zsh config. Thing is, most of what I do with zsh also works on bash, too.

      Of course, that's not WHY I use zsh. Well, it may be part of it, but more importantly is that zsh really is designed to be the most configurable shell around. you can make it do /anything/, given a certain varying amount of work. I'm far too tired to go into any sizeable amount of detail about it, but there's plenty of documentation on zsh's site.

      My point, though, is that EVERYTHING bash can do, zsh can do at least as well and often better. So even if you have the extra power of ZSH on your most-used machines that you may have control over (and many administrators, as long as they're not total jackasses, will listen to someone who asks for a zsh install), and another shell (I use tcsh because i like the syntax of their while/if/etc stuff better, but it doesn't matter that much) anywhere you can't get it, and not suffer too badly over it. You'd just miss out on the extra nicenesses of zsh on machines you didn't have the authority/energy to make it work on.

      And one smaller point: Zsh's POSIX-sh compliance is actually better in compliant mode than Bash's is in sh-compliant mode. You really do get a lot out of zsh as a shell, even if it can be a bit harder to configure.
    • Damn, I'm watching too much TV these days... I mis-parsed the title as *Bush* is the One True Shell...
    • One criticism with bash is that it's a little bloated. Hardly a problem these days, I guess, but 512K is quite a lot for a command line.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • GDB is my shell. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:06PM (#5570340)
    Real men have a perl script to search through all .h's and .so's on the system, and make up an executable including and linking them all, and just printing "hello, world.".

    Then they run that in GDB and break. Instead of rm they use "p unlink("file");" Occasionally they might break down and use "system("shell command\n"); but only if no one is looking.
  • On AIX machines I use tcsh as my interactive shell, but write scripts in ksh, and drop into ksh if I want to test something out. ksh is great for scripting but really sucks for interactivity.

    On Linux machines I go with Bash...it's the best of both worlds, but does use a lot of memory at cold start (~5 megs last time I checked).

    I've heard great things abotu zsh, but haven't really tried it.

    By the way, does anybody else think that readline is the most evil thing on the face of the earth?

  • Zork shell! (Score:5, Funny)

    by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:20PM (#5570453) Journal
    I prefer the adventure shells [ifarchive.org].

    The core cannot defend itself. It dies.

  • Shells aren't for scripting. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mellon ( 7048 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:21PM (#5570462) Homepage
    We use bash/bourne shell for scripting because it's available on every operating system, and its behavior is reasonably predictable. It would be insane to write a shell script in tcsh, for example (not that I haven't done it... :').

    However, if you really want to write a quick script, something like Perl or Python is a better choice, unless you really need that portability. And if you really want a nice UI, well, you should use what works for you.

    On that basis, I use tcsh. it is not superior to bash - if anything, bash is, taken as a whole, superior to tcsh. Likewise ksh. But I'm not using all the features of ksh or bash, and because of my own personal history - what I imprinted on - I find tcsh much more predictable. Its behavior is also more similar to emacs' behavior than bash's behavior, and I use emacs. So for me, tcsh is the right choice.

    You said you use tcsh elsewhere. So to some degree you've probably imprinted on it. It's brave of you to decide to check out the competition, but it's going to come down to a matter of personal preference, so my advice to you is to personally check out the competition - don't take our word for it. This is a productivity tool, so pick the one that works nicely for *you*.

    Having said that, the obvious competition to tcsh is bash, and it's getting to the point where it's pretty much ubiquitous, so that is what I'd suggest you check out. Switch to bash for a month. Try to customize it to your liking. After a month, switch back to tcsh. If you find yourself missing bash, switch back to bash. If you find yourself happy and relieved to be back home, stick with tcsh. If you find yourself still on the fence, use bash, because it's more likely to be installed on random machines that you log into (into which you log?).
    • [...] because it's more likely to be installed on random machines that you log into (into which you log?)

      "into which you login" would be best, I think :)

      I've been a *BSD & Linux user for many a year now, and I was first introduced to tcsh. The Sun OS 5.4 machine that I first logged into had csh, IIRC, and after a while of back & forth between Sun OS 5.4 and BSDI on the school machines, I settled on using tcsh. I find bash to be annoying from time to time, but like many others here I don't do sh

    • However, if you really want to write a quick script, something like Perl or Python is a better choice, unless you really need that portability.

      It is actually pretty hard to write a portable script with a shell. Any non-trivial shellscript has many external dependencies on commands, and its hard to use a subset of commands and features which is common across a wide range of machines.

      And then you get things like sort behaving in unexpected ways depending on the locale settings...

      In general I've found

  • This should have been a survey (Score:3, Insightful)

    by n1ywb ( 555767 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:22PM (#5570472) Homepage Journal
    But bash gets my vote. I had the same problem when I installed NetBSD. I had to suffer through using sh untill I could networking up. Bash was the first thing I downloaded.
    • Here's a bit of a text capture from a NetBSD box:

      rodger: {4} cat /etc/passwd
      root:*:0:0:Charlie &:/root:/bin/csh
      toor:*:0:0:Bourne-again Superuser:/root:/bin/sh
      daemon:*:1:31:The devil himself:/:/sbin/nologin
      operator:*:2:5:System &:/usr/guest/operator:/sbin/nologin
      bin:*:3:7:Bin aries Commands and Source:/:/sbin/nologin
      news:*:6:8:Network News:/var/spool/news:/sbin/nologin
      games:*:7:13:& pseudo-user:/usr/games:/sbin/nologin
      postfix:*:12 :12:& pseudo-user:/var/spool/postfix:/sbin/nologin
      name

  • zsh (Score:5, Informative)

    by honold ( 152273 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:26PM (#5570515)
    i was convinced by adam spier's page [adamspiers.org] and the zsh faq [sunsite.dk] to give zsh a try - it was even a netbsd system that prompted it. i got sick of administering freebsd/opensbd/netbsd with different shells and i wanted to standardize on something with the features i wanted.

    bash was tried first, but when i started playing with misc options like vi mode, got deeper into completion, etc i realized that bash/ksh weren't appropriate long-term choices for me. auto cd to directories, amazing completion options, typo correction, shared history, and a proper vi mode (see this [cwru.edu] for the confession from gnu's docs).

    'knowing' zsh will largely translate to bash/ksh systems when you use them and zsh is not available - you'll just be reminded of their shortcomings :) the basics are largely identical.

    the new unix power tools book [oreilly.com] also makes much mention of zsh.

  • what the fudge? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:45PM (#5570684) Journal
    Hmmm.

    This is a preference thing more than anything else. If you want tcsh on NetBSD cd /usr/pkgsrc/shells/tcsh && make install

    I've used csh, sh, tcsh, ksh, and bash. I think at one point I used zsh. I found that tcsh, bash and zsh are usually similarly setup, and allow using the arrow keys and tab completion. History is something that you set up, and in these 3 shells its always been setup for me. In using ksh, csh and sh, my experience was eew eew eew, but that is just me. I was used to bash at that point. Bash can be a hog or so I am told. I never measured, ub tit does a lot and it is probably not something you'd want if you were building a flopy based distro. Tcsh is not that bad, and can be added nowadays to just about any UNIX platform. Zsh is supposedly better, but I never used it enough to know if it truely was.

    If you are going to do shell scripting then I'd suggest sh for shell scripting. Of course you can write scripts in sh and use tcsh or any other shell if you know what you are doing. Uisng sh for scripting is more portable than perl, tcsh, ksh or bash, as sh is going to be on all modern unix systems. Perl may be on all systems, but don't rely on it. Csh does not allow shell functions, which are kinda handy. Ksh is Suns shell (I think) and I know it is not available on every platforms.

    What do you prefer to use that is the real question. Personally I can make just about any shell work for me if I have to....

  • Personally I'd use bash. The primary reasons I guess are it's resamblance to ksh, my previous perference, and the fact that it comes default with RH linux, which I am running here.

    Besides command line history and editing, I perticularily like the tab search feature. It's saved me a lot of effort typing full paths.

  • Korn shell (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cuchullain ( 25146 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @08:01PM (#5570802) Homepage
    Korn is a great shell, and he is constantly working on it, so it is getting better and better.

    It is the shell I find most often on the commercial boxen that I need to work with, so I use it on linux and freebsd too. I'm certain that there is a version available for netbsd too. pdksh is a distant second to the real thing, so go grab the official ksh! It isn't pure from an open source viewpoint, but I am answering in terms of practicality not idealism.

    You can grab it from att labs' page if I remember correctly. It is the gold standard for 'correct' behavior as far as I am concerned, and is what you will find on a whole slew of different *nix boxes.

    I try to avoid bash, because though it is a really nice shell, I never find it on commercial systems, and I want my shell to behave consistently wherever I am.

    Cuchullain

  • rc (Score:2)

    by AtrN ( 87501 )
    Somewhat saner syntax in places but missing a couple of things. It is nice and small however.
  • I use a CSH dirivitive on systems with use the for most shell tools. i.e. BSD.

    I use a sh derivitive on Unix/Linux machines. I prefer in order of preference bash, then korn, then tcsh, csh, sh

    Command line editing and history is important during normal use. After than it is the programming structures you prefer.

    Being someone who was weaned on a Altos running System 7 back in 1984, I prefer bourne shell dirivitives.

  • duh (-1 redundant) (Score:5, Funny)

    by GiMP ( 10923 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @08:53PM (#5571154)
    I'll be modded down for this but:

    root shells.

  • non-nix shells (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kfx ( 603703 )
    Granted, this topic is geared towards nix shells, but when you're stuck with windows no shell comes close to rivaling the power and flexibility of LiteStep.
    • Cygwin [cygwin.com] comes with ash, ksh, bash, and zsh in the default install, you could pretty much build any shell.

      I need to cheeck out LiteStep, does it integrate into the system well? One problem with Cygwin is it's only aware of Cygwin processes - a ps or top won't show you IE for example.

  • Bash gets my vote (Score:2, Informative)

    by klui ( 457783 )
    When I first used UNIX, it was ksh. I had gotten used to ESC-ESC for name completion. Then I got my NeXT and liked TAB for completion under csh. Much better. When I found out that bash had the same thing but TAB-TAB prints all possible matches, I was hooked from then on. Plus, much of the settings are the same as ksh and scripting is about the same.

    I tried zsh but its man page is like Perl's, referencing a bunch of other man pages, making navigation/reference cumbersome. tcsh's configuration is different e
  • There certainly is a history in the default shell (/bin/csh) on NetBSD. Type the 'h' command to see your numbered command history. Then type, for instance !3 to repeat the third command on the list, or !! to repeat the most recent command.

    But if we wanted to have a shell war, maybe I am just being pedantic and interfering.

  • should make a poll out of this (Score:5, Informative)

    by zatz ( 37585 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @09:45PM (#5571484) Homepage
    I would vote for zsh, personally.

    I've actually had bash segfault on me a few times, which zsh has never done. and zsh uses less memory unless you do abusive things via scripting or the command line editor. zsh scripting is a superset of sh, so the things I try generally work; csh users can have a similar experience after setting a few options. (But remember, csh programming Considered Harmful [faqs.org].) I've become accustomed to spiffy zsh features like reporting when other users log in and out (before the prompt, just like new mail), extended globbing, very customizable completion behavior, being able to tab-expand history references (makes trying "!rm" much less dangerous), and so forth.

    It's even the little things. Like, zsh expands commands when it prints a job completion report, but bash doesn't; so if you have a loop which does something on a bunch of items, each of which can complete in the background, under bash you get a report where each item looks like "[%] Done wget $i" or something equally useless, but under zsh you can see the actual text of the command that finished.

    I have 100+ lines invested in the four rc files for zsh by now, so something new might not be immediately superior for me. I have been meaning to seriously try out es and rc for years.
  • All I've ever used on a machine is tcsh and I simly think it's the best no matter what anybody says.

  • I've been using and programming in Bash for years and yes some of the features like history and tab completion are cool but the real power is in the scripting. I use bash scripts everywhere: backups,parsing files, logging greps to e-mail and in conjunction with numerous other languages that need access to the "system". the true power is in the language that comes with the shell.

    --K
  • I would have to agree with several previous posters, that Bash is the best. The reason why? It is powerful, it is popular, and it is easily scriptable.

    ksh and zsh have their followers, but they tend to be older unix wizards who didn't ahve bash to cut their teeth on. They only keep using zsh and ksh because it is comfortable.

    In the future, I am sure there will be more innovation done on Bash, and perhaps a few forks as well. I hope that the shell paradigm will be rethought from the beginning to the end. I
    • I think you're confusing Zsh with Csh. Bash was around before Zsh. Generally, Zsh can do everything Bash can, and then some.
    • It is powerful, it is popular, and it is easily scriptable.
      All shells are scriptable. ksh, bash, and zsh have very similar scripting languages since they're all descended from Bourne shell. ash is just a Bourne clone. First there was bourne shell, then csh, then ksh. bash copied from Bourne and csh. zsh copied from Bourne, Korn, bash and csh. By your logic, zsh should win because it's the most powerful, taking syntax from all shells. To be honest, I use bash, but it's because of availability and com
  • I use tcsh for my day in/ day out usage. Bash was actually my first shell, but I didn't use it much (I used it to work with my web/ftp accounts on a remote server at the time). Since then, I have done a lot of stuff in tcsh, and have configured a lot of it to what I want to do. For normal interactive useage, it has been good to me.

    However, I couldn't really recommend that you make shell scripts in it. I usually make my shell scripts for straight up sh (when I do make them), but more often than not, I u
  • I don't mind telling you that I use Bash under linux, but before I found out about fink on mac os x I used the default tcsh, and hey -- it's great. It's actually become my preference. This may sound strange, but little things like the way it handles environment variables is what cinched it for me.

  • UNIX shell FAQ (Score:5, Informative)

    by scubacuda ( 411898 ) <scubacuda AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday March 22, 2003 @07:42PM (#5575987)
    While surfing the web for FAQs on UNIX shells, I came across this [faqs.org] popular FAQ on the differences between shells and how to choose.

    There's a great table in there that lists the features of each.

  • Csh programming NO LONGER harmful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluestar ( 17362 ) on Sunday March 23, 2003 @10:11PM (#5580778) Homepage
    Yeah, I read the article. It's from 1996 people. 6.5 years ago. Move on.

    Besides the article is horribly written. It takes him three pages to say "redirecting file descriptors is inferior to sh". Another page to say "quoting sucks". The rest is either petty or doesn't exist in tcsh.

    And he can't decide if he doesn't like csh as a login shell or as a scripting language or both.

    I admit to writing scripts in csh instead of bash. In reality both suck. If I need something so complex I need functions I am NOT using bash or csh.

    Bash and csh as programming languages suck when compared to C, C++, Java, Perl, Python and LISP. But I'm not about to make emacs my login shell (again).

    My login shell is tcsh. There are things I hate about bash/readline. YMMV. Use the right tool for the job. Not available in Tennessee.

  • Depends ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @12:58AM (#5581503) Journal
    When I'm myself, my shell is set to /bin/bash.

    When I'm the root user, my shell is /sbin/sh (No, *NOT* /bin/sh!) On Solaris, one should *NEVER* change root's shell.

    Ever. Ever. EVER. Instead, in root's .profile, I have the following:
    if [ -x /usr/bin/bash ]; then
    exec /usr/bin/bash
    fi
    This _will_ cause problems using dtlogin, but real admins use serial consoles!

    All my scripting is done using /bin/sh .... I know it's standard, I know it's on ALL my Solaris machines (The 2.5.1/2.6 ones don't have bash by default ... thank GOODNESS we're retiring most of them :)

    For simple sysadmin-type tasks, the bourne shell has almost all the features you need ... but if you need to do hairy things with I/O, then it's nuttin' but Perl.... Remind me to share my Veritas Volume Mangler scripts some day :)

    --NBVB

  • BusyBox (Score:3, Informative)

    by e8johan ( 605347 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @01:42AM (#5581625) Homepage Journal

    If you want a small memory footprint, try the embeddable shell alternative: BusyBox [busybox.net].

    "BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind. It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a kernel."

  • why I use csh instead of sh... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jamie Zawinski ( 775 ) <jwz@jwz.org> on Monday March 24, 2003 @08:19AM (#5582519) Homepage

    I never write scripts in csh (I use perl or sh) but I still use csh as my interactive shell, because (aside from trivially launching programs) the most common thing I use any of the actual syntax of the shell for is pounding out stuff like:

    • foreach f ( *.jpg )
      djpeg $f | pnmscale ... | cjpeg > $f:r-thumb.jpg
      end

    sh/bash don't support the $var:r and related syntaxes, and so it's a lot more typing to do:

    • for f in *.jpg ; do
      djpeg $f | pnmscale ... | cjpeg > \
      `echo $f | sed 's/\..*/-thumb.jpg/'`
      end

    • Does zsh support the $f:r syntax? I'm not sure what to look for but it sure looks useful. BTW someone above didn't like the multiple zsh man pages. If you look a little closer you might notice that zshall gives all the man pages in one massive page - at least on my debian system.
  • I call it gsh (Geoffrey Shell). This was an assignment I had in grad school that somehow never ended.

    It isn't very full featured, and as far as a scripting shell goes it is somewhat buggy - but if I need some programming done I use C or Perl.

    However it does the stuff I want it to do!

    I could GPL and release the source, but in all honesty everyone I have gotten to try it hates it. I like it tho. And if it pissed me off I have no one to complain to but me.

    All you out there who like to complain about she
  • It is the default shell for many Linux floppy distributions. It does NOT have command line completion, but when it comes to memory usage, you should really look at it.

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