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.

Comments

command line history

[eXtro]

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.

conch

[dynoman7]

nuff said

Bash is the One True Shell, ksh is very close

[afabbro]

Yes, I'm (mostly, as much as ever) serious.

When picking a shell, you should consider:

• how easy it is to work with interactively
• how easy it is to code (yes, I write 99% of my stuff in perl or whatever, but you will need to script some day, mark my words...if nothing else, system startup scripts for Solaris, AIX, etc.)
• how standard is it on what type of Unices you work on.

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.

Zork shell!

[tm2b]

I prefer the adventure shells.

The core cannot defend itself. It dies.

Shells aren't for scripting.

[mellon]

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?).

A few more details

[devphil]

Some random facts:

• Anyone spending more than a brief amount of time on a *nix system should learn how to use the basic sh commands, even if it's not their login shell? Why? Because 1) most system-level scripts are written in sh, and 2) when major programming languages perform a "shell" call, e.g., system(), it uses sh to do the work.
• There is a POSIX specification of sh which cleans up all the wacky historical bugs. The resulting shell is actually ksh.
• The csh/tcsh family were originally meant to be more friendly to programmers (a C-style syntax), but it all seriously backfired. Every other shell allows the user to write subroutines. Not csh. Instead, you get a goto command. No, I'm not joking.
• tcsh is just some user-friendly features added to csh, but the annoyances and lack of comparative features just doesn't make up for it.

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.

zsh

[honold]

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.

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 basics are largely identical.

the new unix power tools book also makes much mention of zsh.

duh (-1 redundant)

[GiMP]

I'll be modded down for this but:

root shells.

should make a poll out of this

[zatz]

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.

zsh is the supreme power user's shell

[mbogosian]

csh/tcsh...

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 /etc/shells or whatever each time, etc.) for every machine you log into? ...

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).

UNIX shell FAQ

[scubacuda]

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.