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Date:      Fri, 25 Jan 2019 22:56:39 -0500
From:      "Garance A Drosehn" <drosih@rpi.edu>
To:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Importing mksh in base
Message-ID:  <2366C672-5B23-4AF4-985F-8E741B092FF2@rpi.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20190126064128.Y872@besplex.bde.org>
References:  <20190125165751.kpcjjncmf7j7maxd@ivaldir.net> <CALH631keUjj8qUomFY4nT2Mij9T7AWwFEGLDok=6zaaPx4T8DQ@mail.gmail.com> <20190126064128.Y872@besplex.bde.org>

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On 25 Jan 2019, at 14:53, Bruce Evans wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Jan 2019, Gleb Popov wrote:
>
>> Are there FreeBSD users that are used to bash? If not, this proposal
>> looks like another "let's do like Linux" thing.
>
> I have used /bin/bash as the root shell for more about 20 years.  The
> currently install version is slightly newer -- only about 15 years old
> (bash-1.14.7(1) installed by mv'ing it from /usr/local/bin where some
> port put it.

I started using unix somewhere around 1990, moving from an IBM mainframe
to solaris.  I started out using csh because some unix gurus told me it
was the cool shell.  After a month or two I was trying to write some
simple shell script in csh, and couldn't get the damn thing to work.  I
went back to those unix gurus, and they told me that csh couldn't do the
specific thing I was trying to do (whatever that was), and that I should
use /bin/sh for that.

I thought it was a waste to learn one shell for interactive use and a
different one for writing shell scripts.  I've used bash or /bin/sh ever
since.  When I started to use FreeBSD sometime around 1995, I added these
lines to ~root/.login on my machines:

if ($?prompt) then
   if ( -x /usr/local/bin/bash ) then
      # echo "Switching to bash"
      setenv SHELL /usr/local/bin/bash
      exec /usr/local/bin/bash -login
   endif
endif

That way logins to root will work even if /usr/local is not available,
or if something has destroyed the install of bash.

So I have a lot of experience with bash and /bin/sh, almost no experience
with csh or tcsh, and my familiarity with bash has nothing to do with linux.
I'd also expect macOS users would be more used to bash, even though they
might not even know what you were talking about if you asked them "do you
prefer bash vs csh?".

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn                =     drosih@rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer               or   gad@FreeBSD.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;             Troy, NY;  USA



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