Slashdot Mirror
Which Shell Do You Prefer?
Pascal de Bruijn asks: "I recently started to use NetBSD, the first thing I noticed was that it didn't have a command-line history. So I immediately wanted to switch my shell, being on BSD my first instinct was to change to tcsh, but many people told me it wasn't any good. Others recommended zsh. I would really like to hear your opinions about shells." The submitter is particularly interested in shell memory usage, and the features you like...and dislike...from the current options that are available, today.
did you try enabling it, it's off by default
set history=1000
- or maybe -
history = 1000
- or possibly -
set history 1000
I've never seen a shell without command line history, but I've logged into a lot of places where it wasn't turned on by default.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Bash baby!
nuff said
Blarf.
It? Command-line history isn't a feature of an operating system, it's a feature of a shell.
Read csh programming considered harmful. It's not really sensible to write shell scripts using one shell and use another, so steer clear of csh.
Many people like zsh for it's completion routines, but I believe bash has similar facilities by now.
Conch shells.
If your plane crashes on a deserted island, and you get the conch shell, you 0\/\/n3rs the island.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I like bash. It's common, fairly standard. It has history and tab completion. That's all I really need or use. I have it in linux/solaris/cygwin so I'm rarely forced to use something else. Never really cared or needed to use something else.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Personally, I prefer Emacs, because VI doesn't have enough features.
Actually, wait, I prefer Gnome, because I dislike KDE's philosophy in duplicating technologoies that already exist, but in the "KDE" style...
Enterprise vs. the Battlestar Galactica? Enterprise, baby! Battlestars always catch on fire, as if they were made of rice-paper.
No wait, wait... this is about shells. Gosh, I've never used a shell. What is it?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Hands down the most powerful shell there is.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Shells
I originally chose this shell back in '92 for the right hand prompt. A 'spiff' feature for a shell chocked full of features. It was also the first shell to have a truly programmable completion. It has all the interactive add-on's for tcsh, with the base template built off of Korn Shell (so you don't have issues with scripting in something separate from a Bourne derivative).
The z-shell is so filled with features at this point, it's nearly become the "emacs" of shells, and yet, it's memory footprint for the same tasks is smaller than either bash or tcsh.
Royal Dutch?
When picking a shell, you should consider:
The candidates:
sh is too primitive in terms of user features, period. No one uses the Bourne shell if they can help it.
csh/tcsh...well, google for "csh Programming Considered Harmful" to see its many internal bugs. Also, most of the major Unices don't use it (Solaris, AIX, Linux - I guess *BSD might still) for their system stuff. If it's not considered a good scripting platform AND most Unices don't use it for their scripts...
zsh - From what I've read, a good shell, but very nonstandard. Do you really want to lug a shell around and install it (and set up /etc/shells or whatever each time, etc.) for every machine you log into?
ksh - sh scripting with all the good interactive features. A really solid shell and a very good choice. All the sh goodness with the t/csh interactive features added.
bash - I think bash is a little better than ksh because some of its interactive features are better. Tab-completion is better than ESC-\. The way the shell handles tab completion is better (X possibilities, do you want to see?) Lots of little things like that. Benefits greatly from reimplementing ksh. Installed by default on all Linux distros (except tiny niche players) and Solaris since Solaris 8...easy to build and install on AIX or *BSD (and HP-UX I'd guess, I don't know)
bash is the best shell in my opinion and I have no qualms about defending it. ksh is a reasonable second choice and some people prefer it. zsh may be in the running but never caught on widely. Everything else is inferior.
Advice: on VPS providers
Real men have a perl script to search through all .h's and .so's on the system, and make up an executable including and linking them all, and just printing "hello, world.".
Then they run that in GDB and break. Instead of rm they use "p unlink("file");" Occasionally they might break down and use "system("shell command\n"); but only if no one is looking.
I prefer the adventure shells.
The core cannot defend itself. It dies.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
We use bash/bourne shell for scripting because it's available on every operating system, and its behavior is reasonably predictable. It would be insane to write a shell script in tcsh, for example (not that I haven't done it... :').
However, if you really want to write a quick script, something like Perl or Python is a better choice, unless you really need that portability. And if you really want a nice UI, well, you should use what works for you.
On that basis, I use tcsh. it is not superior to bash - if anything, bash is, taken as a whole, superior to tcsh. Likewise ksh. But I'm not using all the features of ksh or bash, and because of my own personal history - what I imprinted on - I find tcsh much more predictable. Its behavior is also more similar to emacs' behavior than bash's behavior, and I use emacs. So for me, tcsh is the right choice.
You said you use tcsh elsewhere. So to some degree you've probably imprinted on it. It's brave of you to decide to check out the competition, but it's going to come down to a matter of personal preference, so my advice to you is to personally check out the competition - don't take our word for it. This is a productivity tool, so pick the one that works nicely for *you*.
Having said that, the obvious competition to tcsh is bash, and it's getting to the point where it's pretty much ubiquitous, so that is what I'd suggest you check out. Switch to bash for a month. Try to customize it to your liking. After a month, switch back to tcsh. If you find yourself missing bash, switch back to bash. If you find yourself happy and relieved to be back home, stick with tcsh. If you find yourself still on the fence, use bash, because it's more likely to be installed on random machines that you log into (into which you log?).
But bash gets my vote. I had the same problem when I installed NetBSD. I had to suffer through using sh untill I could networking up. Bash was the first thing I downloaded.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Some random facts:
The only real choices today as far as user login shells go are bash 2.x, ksh (ksh93, not ksh88), and zsh, all of which continue to cross-pollinate good ideas.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
i was convinced by adam spier's page and the zsh faq to give zsh a try - it was even a netbsd system that prompted it. i got sick of administering freebsd/opensbd/netbsd with different shells and i wanted to standardize on something with the features i wanted.
:) the basics are largely identical.
bash was tried first, but when i started playing with misc options like vi mode, got deeper into completion, etc i realized that bash/ksh weren't appropriate long-term choices for me. auto cd to directories, amazing completion options, typo correction, shared history, and a proper vi mode (see this for the confession from gnu's docs).
'knowing' zsh will largely translate to bash/ksh systems when you use them and zsh is not available - you'll just be reminded of their shortcomings
the new unix power tools book also makes much mention of zsh.
This is a preference thing more than anything else. If you want tcsh on NetBSD cd /usr/pkgsrc/shells/tcsh && make install
I've used csh, sh, tcsh, ksh, and bash. I think at one point I used zsh. I found that tcsh, bash and zsh are usually similarly setup, and allow using the arrow keys and tab completion. History is something that you set up, and in these 3 shells its always been setup for me. In using ksh, csh and sh, my experience was eew eew eew, but that is just me. I was used to bash at that point. Bash can be a hog or so I am told. I never measured, ub tit does a lot and it is probably not something you'd want if you were building a flopy based distro. Tcsh is not that bad, and can be added nowadays to just about any UNIX platform. Zsh is supposedly better, but I never used it enough to know if it truely was.
If you are going to do shell scripting then I'd suggest sh for shell scripting. Of course you can write scripts in sh and use tcsh or any other shell if you know what you are doing. Uisng sh for scripting is more portable than perl, tcsh, ksh or bash, as sh is going to be on all modern unix systems. Perl may be on all systems, but don't rely on it. Csh does not allow shell functions, which are kinda handy. Ksh is Suns shell (I think) and I know it is not available on every platforms.
What do you prefer to use that is the real question. Personally I can make just about any shell work for me if I have to....
Only 'flamers' flame!
Korn is a great shell, and he is constantly working on it, so it is getting better and better.
It is the shell I find most often on the commercial boxen that I need to work with, so I use it on linux and freebsd too. I'm certain that there is a version available for netbsd too. pdksh is a distant second to the real thing, so go grab the official ksh! It isn't pure from an open source viewpoint, but I am answering in terms of practicality not idealism.
You can grab it from att labs' page if I remember correctly. It is the gold standard for 'correct' behavior as far as I am concerned, and is what you will find on a whole slew of different *nix boxes.
I try to avoid bash, because though it is a really nice shell, I never find it on commercial systems, and I want my shell to behave consistently wherever I am.
Cuchullain
"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is not shared." -St. Augustine
I'll be modded down for this but:
root shells.
Granted, this topic is geared towards nix shells, but when you're stuck with windows no shell comes close to rivaling the power and flexibility of LiteStep.
When I first used UNIX, it was ksh. I had gotten used to ESC-ESC for name completion. Then I got my NeXT and liked TAB for completion under csh. Much better. When I found out that bash had the same thing but TAB-TAB prints all possible matches, I was hooked from then on. Plus, much of the settings are the same as ksh and scripting is about the same.
I tried zsh but its man page is like Perl's, referencing a bunch of other man pages, making navigation/reference cumbersome. tcsh's configuration is different enough from [bk]sh's that I stopped using it in short order.
So it's bash for me. It's a good thing bash is available under OS X. Early versions had only sh, csh, and tcsh and things were painful. Recent versions have all those, including bash and zsh.
There certainly is a history in the default shell (/bin/csh) on NetBSD. Type the 'h' command to see your numbered command history. Then type, for instance !3 to repeat the third command on the list, or !! to repeat the most recent command.
But if we wanted to have a shell war, maybe I am just being pedantic and interfering.
bash is an extend-and-embrace version of /bin/sh: it encourages people to write broken shell scripts.
/bin/bash is the automatic replacement for a nonexistent /bin/sh, so people write what they think are generic shell scripts, but carelessly include bash-only features. Then their scripts won't work on systems without /bin/bash.
On some of the GNU systems, i.e. Linux,
bash is sorta like Microsoft's Java implementation in that way.
I would vote for zsh, personally.
I've actually had bash segfault on me a few times, which zsh has never done. and zsh uses less memory unless you do abusive things via scripting or the command line editor. zsh scripting is a superset of sh, so the things I try generally work; csh users can have a similar experience after setting a few options. (But remember, csh programming Considered Harmful.) I've become accustomed to spiffy zsh features like reporting when other users log in and out (before the prompt, just like new mail), extended globbing, very customizable completion behavior, being able to tab-expand history references (makes trying "!rm" much less dangerous), and so forth.
It's even the little things. Like, zsh expands commands when it prints a job completion report, but bash doesn't; so if you have a loop which does something on a bunch of items, each of which can complete in the background, under bash you get a report where each item looks like "[%] Done wget $i" or something equally useless, but under zsh you can see the actual text of the command that finished.
I have 100+ lines invested in the four rc files for zsh by now, so something new might not be immediately superior for me. I have been meaning to seriously try out es and rc for years.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
csh/tcsh...
/etc/shells or whatever each time, etc.) for every machine you log into? ...
I'm really disappointed that this is the default shell in OS X. Using tcsh is downright painful for anyone used to real tab-completion (e.g., zsh, bash).
zsh - From what I've read, a good shell, but very nonstandard. Do you really want to lug a shell around and install it (and set up
bash - I think bash is a little better than ksh...
If you're a bash user for the interactive benefits (i.e., tab completion, etc.), then you should really consider converting to zsh. It will take you a day, but you'll be glad you spent the time and you'll never go back (unless you're forced to, in which case it will be painful).
Aside from the "embrace and extend" approach of these shells that a previous poster mentioned, zsh wins by a light year compared to anything else, especially with its tab completion libraries (imagine being able to hit TAB after typing cvs to get a list of the subcommands). Not only that, but zsh history/command-line editing are far superior (with a true emacs-style kill ring and real multi-line command editing). The learning curve can be steep, but there are plenty of tutorials out there to get you started. zsh is the power user's shell of choice if you spend any time in the shell (this is coming from a six-year bash zealot).
moto411.com
Of course I realise you're joking, but Emacs actually does come with a built-in shell, eshell.
What rocks about it is that it's written in Emacs lisp, so you can use it on anything Emacs runs on. It's very nice to be able to fire up a Unix-like shell on Windows for those of use who prefer a cli approach and have never adapted to the MS-DOS tradition.
Still though, when I am in a Unix environment I like zsh for my login shell, which still has a more features.
If you try zsh and you don't think it is worth the bother to lug zsh around, you didn't have much need for zsh in the first place.
I lug zsh everywhere. Do I really want to? Absolutely.
Even though Python has a fairly nice interactive mode, it makes for a really lousy general purpose shell. You certainly can create processes, plumb them together, redirect their stdio and all that, but not in the concise manner one expects from a CLI. People have tried to write shells around Perl, Python and similar languages, but these things tend to fail in the usability department, which is why hardly anyone actually uses them. Possibly such a thing could be written and not suck, but it hasn't happened yet.
Whatever the intentions of Bash's authors with regard to "embrace and extend" tactics, it can be used perfectly safely, and may well be convenient for the poster.
Bash is one of those programs which acts differently depending on the filename of its executable. When invoked from a copy or a link named /bin/sh, it emulates the traditional Bourne shell without GNU extensions.
Thus, always write your scripts with the traditional #!/bin/sh shebang. If Bash is masquerading as Bourne, it won't hurt you that way. You can still benefit from Bash's extensions for interactive use (such as command editing and history) by setting your shell to /bin/bash via chsh.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
While surfing the web for FAQs on UNIX shells, I came across this popular FAQ on the differences between shells and how to choose.
There's a great table in there that lists the features of each.
You basically use the /bin/ksh Korn Shell because it
/usr/local/bin, /bin/ksh and /bin/csh are statically linked
/bin/ksh fits you just fine.
is part of the base system. It's the pdksh, not the
ast-ksh, and it has basically every feature from GNU
bash you would need (except man page and password
auto-completion *g*). And it's free as in BSD licence.
On GNU/Linux, where I usually have the choice between
GNU bash and tcsh, I prefer bash (until I get to install
pdksh) because it's a bourne shell (well, more or less).
On BSD, however, I urge you to not install GNU bash,
especially not as the root shell, because:
- if you get used to it, it's harder to use other shells,
e.g. if you're at anyone else's system
- it's dynamically linked and resides in
whereas
(system rescue issues)
- especially for root, I'd stick with the shells the system
provides (security issues)
So I think
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Programmable completion has been in bash for a while now. See the original project page for more, or use the debian bash package, which includes the completion libraries by default.
I actually had to disable the cvs-subcommand-autocomplete. I would try to complete the name of an actual file, and the cvs-completion would fire... generating network traffic to the CVS server... taking forever... when all I wanted was a local filename.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Yeah, I read the article. It's from 1996 people. 6.5 years ago. Move on.
Besides the article is horribly written. It takes him three pages to say "redirecting file descriptors is inferior to sh". Another page to say "quoting sucks". The rest is either petty or doesn't exist in tcsh.
And he can't decide if he doesn't like csh as a login shell or as a scripting language or both.
I admit to writing scripts in csh instead of bash. In reality both suck. If I need something so complex I need functions I am NOT using bash or csh.
Bash and csh as programming languages suck when compared to C, C++, Java, Perl, Python and LISP. But I'm not about to make emacs my login shell (again).
My login shell is tcsh. There are things I hate about bash/readline. YMMV. Use the right tool for the job. Not available in Tennessee.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
When I'm the root user, my shell is
Ever. Ever. EVER. Instead, in root's
All my scripting is done using
For simple sysadmin-type tasks, the bourne shell has almost all the features you need
--NBVB
If you want a small memory footprint, try the embeddable shell alternative: BusyBox.
"BusyBox has been written with size-optimization and limited resources in mind. It is also extremely modular so you can easily include or exclude commands (or features) at compile time. This makes it easy to customize your embedded systems. To create a working system, just add /dev, /etc, and a kernel."
I never write scripts in csh (I use perl or sh) but I still use csh as my interactive shell, because (aside from trivially launching programs) the most common thing I use any of the actual syntax of the shell for is pounding out stuff like:
djpeg $f | pnmscale
end
sh/bash don't support the $var:r and related syntaxes, and so it's a lot more typing to do:
djpeg $f | pnmscale
`echo $f | sed 's/\..*/-thumb.jpg/'`
end
It is the default shell for many Linux floppy distributions. It does NOT have command line completion, but when it comes to memory usage, you should really look at it.
Troll: Large Giant, 63 hp, AC 16, Usually chaotic evil.