It's not as though I agree with what Dr. Kimchi said. Actually, I don't think this list is the forum in which it is useful to debate this issue... probably initiating a discussion with the vide-deans in charge of teaching and undergrad studies is the better way to advocate moving away from C-Shell at the CS department.
Eyal Shlomi Fish wrote: > On Wednesday 10 October 2007, Eyal Rozenberg wrote: >> After reading Shlomi's post, I decided to ask Yechiel Kimchi about the >> C-shell issue; here's the email exchange: >> >> -------------------- >> >> Hello Yechiel, >> >> I hadn't really given the Matam course syllabus a look since I had taken >> it (with you) in 2001, but I continue to hear the "what do they teach C >> shell for" complaint, so today I visited last semester's course website >> and C shell is still there; I checked the FAQ for an answer to the >> question and I didn't find one. >> >> So, if it's not too much trouble for you to answer - how come C shell is >> still taught in the course, instead of less problematic and >> actually-used scripting shells like bash or ksh? This, in light of: >> >> http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/ >> http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/CshTop10.txt >> >> Of course, there's also the question of whether shell scripting should >> be at all taught as part of Matam, but that's a broader issue of what >> kinds of training should students get to work with / administer / >> program in UNIXish environments, so that's not what I'm asking >> >> Eyal >> >> PS - The answer to my question might belong in the FAQ :-) >> >> -------------------- >> >> Shalom Eyal, >> >> First, thanks for you interet and comments. >> >> I'll make it short (it's 1:35am here :-) without looking at the >> references (sorry, I'll look at them sometime later, but I doubt they will >> change my reply). 1. C-Shell is taught as a "tool" for manipulating >> programs (in MaTaM's view, especially for testing) - this answers also the >> Q of "why scripting at all?" > > The same argument can be said in favour of Bash. > >> 2. Students are not expected to become Csh >> experts (I may agree that some technical details that are taught are not >> necessary) but they are expect to understand its usefulness. In that >> respect - any scripting language will do, even Perl. > > This same argument can also be said in favour of Bash. Even more, because > Bash > is more useful than C-Shell. > >> 3. AFAIK all Technion servers are csh or tcsh (I don't know whether >> they provide bash) so it is the environment we have. > > So? Bash ships with Linux by default, so it's a no-brainer to install it > there, t2 carries it and one can install it everywhere a CS student may have > to use it. > > I'm pretty sure you can change that. > >> 4. Coming to think of it, the resemblance with C is an advantage >> (despite the "defects" and defects of csh). > > C-shell hardly resembles "C", and there are many "faux-amis" ( > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend ). For instance, C-shell has no > curly braces ({ ... }), you cannot put arbitrary expressions inside the if > ( ... ), assignments are "set a=b" instead of "a = b", etc. I find the Bash > syntax much more suitable for a shell, and more consistent, and think it > would be less trouble to learn it. > > So it's not a C-shell advantage either. > > Regards, > > Shlomi Fish > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Homepage: http://www.shlomifish.org/ > > If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying > one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer. > -- An Israeli Linuxer > _______________________________________________ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux