Shell selection

[Dave Sill]

In article <13563 at hydra.gatech.EDU>, ae221mp at prism.gatech.EDU (MIKE PATTERSON) writes:
>
>I have a few novice questions concerning unix shells.
>I know that a variety exists: C-shell, Bourne shell, Korn 
>shell.  However, I'm not aware of _why_ there are several
>shells as opposed to one.  Please try to address the 
>following:
>
>  1) Are there shells other than those mentioned above?

Yes.  Tcsh (TWENEX C-Shell) is a modified C-Shell.  It has command
completion and history editing plus some other stuff.  It requires
C-Shell source code, but is itself freely distributed.

My favorite is Bash, the Bourne-Again SHell.  It's distributed by the
Free Software Foundation, so source code is readily available even for
non-source sites.  It has all of the features of tcsh and includes
much Bourne shell compatibility.  In my opinion, it's the way to go.

>  2) Is any one shell more popular among users than the others?

That's hard to measure.  C-Shell and Bourne shell are more readily
available, so numerically more users use them.  But among those aware
of the other choices, tcsh, ksh, and bash are preferred for their
extra interactive functionality.  Most shell scripts are written in
Bourne shell since it's *always* available.

>  3) Is any one shell more popular among installations than
>     the others, and why?

I suppose big System V sites tend to favor Korn shell among the
second-generation shells since it comes standard on their systems.

>The reason for asking is that I don't care to learn about
>all of the shells - I'd rather devote my time to the one
>shell most likely to suit my changing needs over a period 
>of years.  The machine now at my disposal has the three
>shells mentioned above.  Since each seems to be equally 
>cryptic, I'd like to stay with just one. 

Are you a shell *user* only, or do you *program* too?  If the latter,
I'd recommend using Bash and programming in Bash or Bourne--depending
upon whether or not portability is a big issue.  But then, if I knew
perl I'd probably recommend programming in it.

-- 
Dave Sill (de5 at ornl.gov)		These are my opinions.
Martin Marietta Energy Systems
Workstation Support