Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site ucbvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!wivax!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!ucbcad!ucbvax!fair From: fair@ucbvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Re: Callan Unistar 200 Message-ID: <378@ucbvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 28-Jun-83 00:04:43 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.378 Posted: Tue Jun 28 00:04:43 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 27-Jun-83 12:56:15 EDT References: <3719@root44.UUCP> Organization: U. C. Berkeley Computer Science Lines: 32 For Dave Lukes, somewhere in the U.K.: =~ (flame ON) The infamous Bourne shell (/bin/sh) is a horror to do anything with. It's sole purpose, in so far as I am concerned is to invoke other programs in a non-interactive way. (ex. popen(3) or system(3)). It is small and fast, and therefore nearly acceptable for this purpose. It is unacceptable for interactive use, because it is missing a history mechanism, because its if, while, (and other such "flow control" statements) have very cryptic syntax, and because the redirection mechanism for stderr is insane. It is unacceptable for scripts for most of the same reasons. Whew! ~= (flame OFF) Now in a more subdued tone, I should say that which shell you use is largely a matter of taste & religion (like editors), and I have found that I like csh better than sh, and the majority of the programmers who use Unix that I know prefer csh to sh. Csh can do some things which I consider a necessity in a command interpreter. Among other things, I am thankful that I have a choice! Many of the existing OS's in the world today don't offer one a choice, so the users are stuck with one person's (or programming team's) idea of what a command interpreter should be. Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@Berkeley ucbvax!dual!fair Dual Systems Corporation P.S. Of course the fact that I learned Unix at Berkeley has something to do with which shell I use. On the other hand, I like to think of myself as being flexible. After all, I prefer using vi to TOPS-20 EMACS, and I learned EMACS first.