From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Jul 28 1:44:46 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mail.palmerharvey.co.uk (mail.palmerharvey.co.uk [62.172.109.58]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B6681523E for ; Wed, 28 Jul 1999 01:44:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Dom.Mitchell@palmerharvey.co.uk) Received: from ho-nt-01.pandhm.co.uk (unverified) by mail.palmerharvey.co.uk (Content Technologies SMTPRS 2.0.15) with ESMTP id ; Wed, 28 Jul 1999 09:43:41 +0100 Received: from voodoo.pandhm.co.uk (VOODOO [10.100.35.12]) by ho-nt-01.pandhm.co.uk with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2448.0) id PJ2VDW0R; Wed, 28 Jul 1999 09:43:40 +0100 Received: from dom by voodoo.pandhm.co.uk with local (Exim 2.10 #1) id 119PJI-0004DT-00; Wed, 28 Jul 1999 09:43:36 +0100 Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 09:43:36 +0100 To: Doug Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What to tell to Linux-centric people?! Message-Id: <19990728094335.D16017@voodoo.pandhm.co.uk> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.6i In-Reply-To: ; from Doug on Tue, Jul 27, 1999 at 01:00:17PM -0700 From: Dominic Mitchell Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, Jul 27, 1999 at 01:00:17PM -0700, Doug wrote: > What features specifically do you recommend that we look at other > than those two, and how do they differ from bash? I'm willing to give > another shell a look, but "Use this, it's better" isn't a convincing > argument for me. :) Extended globbing. eg: less [A-Z]*(.) to view all the README files and suchlike in a directory, whilst ignoring things like CVS. Another favorite is "find /sys/*~compile | xargs egrep", which looks in all kernel source directories except the compile tree. Programmable completion. Takes a while to set up, but you can't live without it when you're done. I found it particularly useful for use with MH commands, and pkg_delete. eg: "show +in" -> "show +inbox". Not only that, but with the menu completion, you just keep hitting tab until you get what you want. Very lazy, very nice. How about completion for cd that only looks at directories? You can get implicit tees and cats with redirection syntax. eg: "ls -l > file1 > file2". You can turn off csh-style history easily ("setopt nobanghist"). Very important! For new users, if it sees a command beginning with rm and ending in "*", it asks if you're sure. That's gotta be the number one complaint about Unix from DOS people. Autoloaded functions (load on demand is a better description). I know that ksh and zsh have these, but I don't think bash does. One thing I find quite useful is that you can extend the "~user" syntax with your own variables. So, on our web cache machine, I automatically set "squid=/cacheboy/data01/squid" and I can then do "cd ~squid/logs". Generally, there are lots of little extensions that make life much easier. I would reccomend looking at: http://sunsite.auc.dk/zsh/Intro/index.html And going through the "tutorial on zsh" as a good introduction to some of the capabilities. Once you've done that, looking through the hypertext manual is interesting to see precisely what the extensions are. -- Dom Mitchell -- Palmer & Harvey McLane -- Unix Systems Administrator In Mountain View did Larry Wall Sedately launch a quiet plea: That DOS, the ancient system, shall On boxes pleasureless to all Run Perl though lack they C. -- ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. ********************************************************************** To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message