Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 18:09:34 -0600 From: Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> To: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: bash instead of csh (completely) Message-ID: <20100605000934.GB20023@guilt.hydra> In-Reply-To: <AANLkTikOwSjEOEKa8Tm03hY9r5lQ3lJ-gL0lSGc-o1Ql@mail.gmail.com> References: <AANLkTinPTpGn-Mo3Fi4zf4b3kXYDGRnh6Bmajaphiuvp@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTinZeECqzLQaPOZydqkK4NaVm6SyCqoG4nxAR_pi@mail.gmail.com> <AANLkTikOwSjEOEKa8Tm03hY9r5lQ3lJ-gL0lSGc-o1Ql@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--TRYliJ5NKNqkz5bu Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 04:03:42PM -0400, Jerry B. Altzman wrote: > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 14:59, Chris Rees <utisoft@gmail.com> wrote: >=20 > > Why would you want to do that? > > > To get rid of csh? > http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/ As pointed out already (at least twice), that is about csh *programming*. What this means is that nothing in that screed says that having csh installed on your system is "bad". If you actually buy everything that Mr. Christiansen says about how csh is "bad" for programming (and I don't buy everything he says there, though I do agree with him on a lot of other topics, particularly where Perl is concerned), you still have no reason based on that screed to avoid using csh (or tcsh) as your interactive shell. Furthermore, there are reasons you shouldn't use bash for scripting. It is rather dependency-heavy, for a shell, and if you're going to write shell scripts you should really try to write them to be as simple, and as widely understandable and portable, as possible. This basically means sh (the Bourne shell) rather than csh, tcsh, bash, zsh, ksh, et cetera. Even the sh-emulation that bash provides, and that many Linux systems use instead of a "real" sh, is less than perfect in that regard -- but it's close enough for government work, I suppose. I'm about to get very opinionated, so feel free to stick your fingers in your ears if you don't like what I have to say: If you get to the point where your programming efforts are so sophisticated that you can't make do with sh, you should be using a "real" programming language, rather than a shell that happens to allow scripting. This means that by the time sh (with grep, awk, et cetera) isn't good enough, you should really consider using something like Perl or Ruby. By the time sh isn't really sufficient, you're talking about "real" programming, by which point the lack of clarity of the syntax of the typical shell languages can become a real thorn in your side when it comes to maintenance. Maybe it's just me, but just as I don't see any particular need for MS Access as a DBMS when it's overlapped by spreadsheets and SQLite on one end and by a variety of more "serious" DBMSes like PostgreSQL on the other end, I don't really see much point for bash as a scripting language when it's significantly overlapped by sh on one end and Perl, Ruby, et cetera on the other end. I suppose your mileage may vary. Anyway . . . ultimately, my point is that I love tcsh as an interactive shell, and never use it for "programming". I find it odd that people want to do programming in a typical Unix shell other than simple scripting in sh when there are such better options available. Perl is even more ubiquitous than bash. Why not just use that for scripting if you want more than sh? --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] --TRYliJ5NKNqkz5bu Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkwJlb4ACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKW7BwCfW/NAEpzIBrI1zXPso84rW7fk U7YAoJ+rZt28jgF8JBa4+9nYAj/uPv0e =N4Gg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --TRYliJ5NKNqkz5bu--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20100605000934.GB20023>