Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:23:54 -0600
From: Stan Marsh <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
| It certainly *could* have been implemented in a way where this would
| not happen.
No, it can't, not and be anything like Bourne shell (POSIX shell)
compatible.
| There *are* scripting languages that read in the entire
| source at startup and build an internal representation which is then
| executed.
Yes, of course there are, but they're not Bourne shell compat.
| I think, IIRC, that the "Oil Shell" (Google it) *is* in this category.
Not really:
The Oils project is focused on a language for automation and glue,
as opposed to a user interface.
[ From: https://www.oilshell.org/cross-ref.html ]
Do remember that bash (and all other Bourne shells, and csh etc as well)
are shells first (that is, the user interface) and programming languages
second.
If you want to program in a programming language, there are lots to
choose from, pick one of the many available which suits your purpose
(from the truly compiled, to semi-compiled, to fully interpreted).
If you meant that Bourne could have designed the shell differently
than he did (and do recall that it was designed to run on pdp-11's, many
of which had a total available address space of 64KB/process (16 bit pointers)
including both the code, and the data) then fine - but in that case it
wouldn't have been suitable for use as an ordinary login shell, and we'd
all be using something different instead.
kre
