> Neither am I, but people might be interested to read the > "Csh Programming Considered Harmful" FAQ which is at:- > > http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/#ct > > It's dated 6 Oct 1996 14:03:18 GMT
The old FUD. It is specific about csh only as well, tcsh was split off for a reason (and well before 1996). csh hasn't had any changes to it, dunno, for over a decade? FYI, most of the nice features in bash seem to have come from tcsh. This goes both ways, tcsh now has && and || operators. Also FYI, it's easy to find areas in both shells which utterly suck. E.g., it's impossible to do any useful safe programming in bash 1 - no arrays (if you disagree, I challenge you to come up with a piece of code which can move a number of filename arguments around, all of which may be empty or contain any number of special shell characters, including newlines). Arrays were only an afterthought in bash and by golly, it shows. Redirecting both stdout and stderr in an interactive bash into $PAGER it a PITA. I do find bugs in bash when programming shell scripts, and I seem to remember comments from commercial sources that this kind of inconsistency in bash is a problem (different versions, different bugs). The often cited problems with startup/non-login in tcsh are caused by idiots making silly scripts, hardly tcsh's fault although common, and are exactly the same in bash. I could go on but I have better things to do. > However it has persuaded me that expending time learning > anything about [t]csh is a very questionable investment. Instead of slogging off csh (about which nobody cares anyway) a more balanced approach would be desirable. If you compare with a bash of 1996 you'll be in for a rough ride. My investment in tcsh started long before bash was available. Btw tcsh is universal across commercial *ix, bash is Linux and that's it (unless things have changed in the last 2-3 years). All things to consider. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
