Apple Switches tcsh for bash

gklinger writes "AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has switched from tcsh to bash in the the latest developer build (7B44) of Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). There is speculation that the switch was made to appeal to Linux users. Experienced users get pretty religious about their shells so what remains to be seen is how diehard tcsh users will react." I don't know about appealing to Linux users in particular, but I just don't know many people who prefers tcsh these days, on any platform. It seems like everyone is using bash or zsh.

Comments

Re:Default shell can be changed, I think

[profet]

from shell (or just find the double clickable icon):

open /Applications/Utilities/NetInfo\ Manager.app

now navigate to users->$userWhosShellYouWantToChange

find the key named....(this is a tough one) "shell" and then just put the shell you want...bash....whatever...

Re:Let's get rid of sendmail too

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm glad they don't install emacs. I'd be even happier if they removed sendmail as well."

This will not happen. sendmail is written by Kirk McKusick's partner, Eric Allman, and Apple are still trying very very VERY hard to recruit Kirk to help with speed and more robust POSIX compliance. Pitching Kirk's life partner's work would not be a convincing way of showing Kirk much they want him on board.

Re:*CSH IS DYING

[babbage]

get emacs in the default install

Come again?

% ls -1 /usr/bin/*emacs*
/usr/bin/emacs
/usr/bin/emacs-21.1
/usr/bin/emacsclient

Funny troll, but emacs is part of the default install.

Caveat: it's possible that emacs is part of the developer's tools rather than a base OSX installation. I don't think that matters though: if you're looking for a "real Unix", then you're going to want a C compiler and all the rest anyway, so you're going to check off the button for "install BSD subsystem" at system install time and you're going to install the developer's tools immediately after you first log in to the system. So whether Emacs was available 0 minutes or 2 minutes after the first login, I still would call that part of a complete operating system, and saying that it's not available is just trolling.

Re:How diehard tcsh users will respond:

[gabe]

gabe@jupiter:~$ chsh /bin/tcsh
chsh: unknown user: /bin/tcsh

Well, even if you do just 'chsh' and edit the Shell line, it still doesn't make any changes to netinfo...

Perhaps you'll want to do this instead:

niutil -createprop . /users/myusername shell /bin/tcsh

Re:Let's get rid of sendmail too

[allgood2]

Came with the system. I'm in process of setting up a brand new laptop with OS X 10.2.6, and emacs is there. I haven't even installed Developer Tools as of yet, which is where it was before. So sometime, probably in some update from 10.2.3 to 10.2.6 emacs was added to the basic OS.

Re:But tcsh is nice!

[babbage]

Or skip the "here's how to use a text editor" steps entirely:

% echo "set completion-ignore-case on" >> ~/.inputrc

The file redirection operators are your friend, no matter what shell dialect you prefer. :)