by Archive-name: unix-faq/shell/shell-differences
Version: 1.03
Modifications since last issue:
- A Brief history of Unix shells has had the order corrected, and a
better description for zsh and rc inserted
- A Further Information section has been added at the end (comments please)
- Yet more updates to the shell features table.
The following article answers the frequently asked questions, what
UNIX shells are available, what are the differences between them and
how do you change your interactive shell.
WHY CHANGE YOUR SHELL
The UNIX shell is most people's main access to the UNIX operating system
and as such any improvement to it can result in considerably more
effective use of the system, and may even allow you to do things you
couldn't do before. The primary improvement most of the new generation
shells give you is increased speed. They require a lot less key strokes to
get the same results due to their completion features, they give you more
information e.g. showing your directory in your prompt, showing which files
it would complete, and they cover some of the more annoying features of
UNIX, such as not going back up symbolic links to directories.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF UNIX SHELLS
In the near beginning there was the Bourne shell /bin/sh (written by
S. R. Bourne), it had (and still does) a very strong powerful syntactical
language built into it, with all the features that are commonly considered
to produce structured programs, it has particularly strong
provisions for controlling input and output and in its expression matching
facilities. But no matter how strong its input language is, it had one
major drawback; it made nearly no concessions to the interactive user (the
only real concession being the use of shell functions and these were only
added later) and so there was a gap for something better.
Along came the people from UCB and the C-shell /bin/csh was born. Into
this shell they put several concepts which were new, (the majority of these
being job control and aliasing) and managed to produce a shell that was
much better for interactive use. But as well as improving the shell for
interactive use they also threw out the baby with the bath water and went
for a different input language.
The theory behind the change was fairly good, the new input language was
to resemble C, the language in which UNIX itself was written, but they
made a complete mess of implementing it. Out went the good control of
input and output and in came the bugs. The new shell was simply too buggy
to produce robust shell scripts and so everybody stayed with the Bourne
shell for that, but it was considerably better for interactive use so
changed to the C shell, this resulted in the stupid situation where people
use a different shell for interactive work than for non-interactive, a
situation which a large number of people still find themselves in today.
After csh was let loose on an unsuspecting world various people decided
that the bugs really should get fixed, and while they where at it they
might as well add some extra features. In came command line editing,
TENEX-style completion and several other features. Out went most of the
bugs, but did the various UNIX operating system manufacturers start
shipping tcsh instead of csh? No, they stuck with the standard C-Shell.
Eventually David Korn from AT&T had the bright idea to sort out this
mess and the Korn shell /bin/ksh made its appearance. This quite sensibly
junked the C shells language and reverted back to the bourne shell
language, but it also added in the many features that made the C shell
good for interactive work (you could say it was the best of both worlds),
on top of this, it also added a some features from other operating. The
Korn shell became part of System V but had one major problem; unlike the
rest of the UNIX shells it wasn't free, you had to pay AT&T for it.
It was at about this time that the first attempts to standardize UNIX
started in the form of the POSIX standard. POSIX specified more or less
the System V Bourne Shell (by this time the BSD and System V versions had
got slightly different). Later the standard is upgraded, and somehow the
new standard managed to look very much like ksh.
Also at about this time the GNU project was underway and they decided
that they needed a free shell, they also decided that they wanted to make
this new shell POSIX compatible, thus bash (the Bourne again shell) was
born. Like the Korn shell bash was based upon the Bourne shells language
and like the Korn shell, it also pinched features from the C shell and
other operating systems (in my opinion it put them together better; guess
which shell I use), but unlike the Korn shell it is free. Bash was quickly
adopted for LINUX (where it can be configured to perform just like the
Bourne shell), and is the most popular of the free new generation shells.
Meanwhile faced with the problem of porting the Bourne shell to Plan 9,
Tom Duff revolts and writes rc, he publishes a paper on it, and Byron
Rakitzis reimplements it under UNIX. Rc ended up smalled, simpler, more
regular and in most peoples opinion a much better programmed shell.
The search for the perfect shell still goes on and the latest entry into
this arena is zsh. Zsh was written by Paul Falstad while he was a student
a Princeton and is a feature packed shell which has so many features that
I don't even think the he even knows all of them.
DECIDING ON A SHELL
Which of the many shells you choose depends on many different things, here
is what I consider to be the most important, you may think differently.
1) How much time do I have to learn a new shell? There is no point in
using a shell with a different syntax, or a completly different alias
system if you havn't the time to learn it. If you have the time and are
presently using csh or tcsh it is worth considering a switch to a Bourne
shell variant.
2) What do I wish to be able to do with my new shell. The main reason for
switching shells is to gain extra functionality; its vital you know what
you are gaining from the switch.
3) Do I have to be able to switch back to a different shell. If you may
have to switch back to a standard shell, it is fairly important you
don't become too dependent on extra features and so can't use an older
shell.
4) How much extra load can the system cope with? The more advanced shells
tend to take up extra CPU, since they work in cbreak mode; if you are on
an overloaded machine they should probably be avoided; this can also
cause problems with an overloaded network.
5) What support is given for my new shell? If your new shell is not
supported make sure you have someone you can ask if you encounter
problems or that you have the time to sort them out yourself.
6) What shell am I using already? Switching between certain shells of the
same syntax is alot easier than switching between shells of a different
syntax.
7) Can I afford any minor bugs? All shells have some bugs in them
(especially csh) can you afford the problems that may occur because of
them.
SHELL FEATURES (0)
sh csh ksh bash tcsh zsh rc
Job control N Y Y Y Y Y N
Aliases N Y Y Y Y Y N
Shell functions Y(1) N Y Y N Y Y
"Sensible" Input/Output redirection Y N Y Y N Y Y
Directory stack N Y Y Y Y Y N
Command history N Y Y Y Y Y N(7)
Command line editing N N Y Y Y Y N(7)
Vi Command line editing N N Y Y Y(3) Y N(7)
Emacs Command line editing N N Y Y Y Y N(7)
Rebindable Command line editing N N N Y Y Y N(7)
User name look up N Y Y Y Y Y N(7)
Login/Logout watching N N N N Y Y N
Filename completion N Y(1) Y Y Y Y N(7)
Username completion N Y(2) Y Y Y Y N(7)
Hostname completion N Y(2) Y Y Y Y N(7)
History completion N N N N Y Y N
Fully programmable Completion N N N N Y Y N
Mh Mailbox completion N N N N(4) N(6) N(6) N
Co Processes N N Y N N Y N
Builtin artithmetic evaluation N Y Y Y Y Y N
Can follow symbolic links N N Y Y Y Y N
Periodic command execution N N N N Y Y N
Custom Prompt (easily) N N Y Y Y Y Y
Sun Keyboard Hack N N N N N Y N
Spelling Correction N N N N Y Y N
Process Substitution N N N Y(2) N Y Y
Underlying Syntax sh csh sh sh csh sh rc
Freely Available N N N(5) Y Y Y Y
Checks Mailbox N Y Y Y Y Y N(8)
Tty Sanity Checking N N N N Y Y N
Can cope with large argument lists Y N Y Y Y Y Y
Can avoid user startup files N N N Y N Y N
Can specify start up
...
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