Shell history

[Charles J. Antonelli]

In article <214 at isieng.UUCP> ron at isieng.UUCP (Ronald P. Hughes) writes:
>In article <71 at cascade.ARPA> griff at cascade.UUCP (Peter Griffin) writes:
>>If csh was developed BEFORE sh, what shell was it developed under?
>
>Back in the days of Version 6 UNIX, there was a shell (/bin/sh) that
>predated the Bourne shell.  I don't know if Steve Bourne was involved
>in this earlier shell's development, but his new creation was intended
>to be a superset of the old. 

That old Version 6 UNIX shell was called the Mashey Shell, I believe,
after its creator John Mashey.  After the introduction of the then
brand new Bourne Shell with Version 7 there was a period of attitude
readjustment, confusion (the Mashey Shell was renamed msh for those who
didn't want to switch, the Bourne Shell was sometimes named bsh for
the same reason, both were occasionally named sh for maximal confusion),
Bourne Shell convertees walked around muttering that they had been Bourne
again (really), and a good time was had by all.