On Sunday 09 July 2006 02:45, Amos Shapira wrote:
> On 09/07/06, Shlomi Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > but also the CS one to teach bash programming instead of csh programming:
>
> If you go through all this to convince them to switch - I think you'll
> do them a greater favour by convincing them to switch to standard
> Bourne Shell[1] rather than learn to rely on Bash - it will ensure
> greater standard-compliance and portability[2].
You have a point here. However, bash (and ksh) has many useful extensions over
standard Bourne Shell. The old Bourne Shell is very limited, and while being
the standard, most people don't consistently use its features exclusively in
their scripts. The Bourne Shell does not have the super-useful $(...) for
example, which I believe is a ksh extension (albeit ash which is a
minimalistic Bourne Shell clone implemented it).
>
> For instance - dig through the Debian bug tracking system and see how
> many bugs or changelogs mention changes made in order to avoid
> reliance on Bash features.
Hmmm... reliance on Bash features where?
>
> They can learn, as an addendum, to use Bash interactive features and
> sugar toppings, but "don't put a barrier in front of a blind man" like
> MS does by injecting non-standard features without making them aware
> of that (cf HTML, JavaScript, C++, and what they tried to do to Java).
>
There are a few differences here:
1. bash, zsh and recently even ksh are open-source.
2. They are portable and run on most 32-bit Unixes as well as Win32. (with
cygwin or in the case of zsh even without).
3. They have an extensive documentation that matches them.
4. They may actually be part of more modern standards like the Linux Standard
Base. (But I'm not sure about it).
5. Standard Bourne Shell (which you may still find as /bin/sh in some
proprietary System V derivatives) is much less useful and much more annoying
than one using some of bash/ksh/zsh/ash extensions.
All that said, I'd still be happy with a csh->Pure Bourne Shell switch.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage: http://www.shlomifish.org/
95% of the programmers consider 95% of the code they did not write, in the
bottom 5%.
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