amit@umn-cs.UUCP (Neta Amit) (06/20/87)
I know of at least 5 (five) different implementations of csh-like
shells, with command- and file-completion, and/or with emacs-like
command line editing. These are: ncsh, newtcsh, tcsh, itcsh and
mcsh. While some share ancestors, there are differences in the
implementation, features, and (particularly) buggy status.
I'm trying to pick the best in the pack, but have access only to
three out of the five.
I'd be very greatful if you
(1) tell me about other implementations
(2) share your experience
(3) let me know if and how I can FTP, thru any of the
major networks (arpanet, csnet, bitnet, usenet).
Please mail directly to amit@umn-cs.arpa. I'll
summarize to the net.
I searched the mod.sources archive at purdue (aka
comp.sources.unix). How come there are 3 zillion
editors and (almost) no shells ?
--Neta Amit, U of Minnesota CSciron@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP (06/20/87)
I have one, except mine uses an underlying Bourne shell. Let's not comment on the choice of underlying shell other than to say it's a matter of taste. I think the Bourne shell is much cleaner in many respects but was missing many of the features that drove people to the C shell in the first place. My number one problem is that people stopped putting shell escapes into programs when they got job control, this didn't bother me as much (I use a windowing terminal) but certain programs like TALK which run in raw mode don't bother to check to see if you had a suspend character turned on, they just go ahead and emulate it and suspend themselves if you type control-Z locking decent /bin/sh users up. I immersed my self into the Bourne shell and added job control. The functionality and user interface is nearly identical to the CSH though I decided not to get involved with the internals of two shells, so it is made compatible by external examination. Then 5R2 came out with shell functions, which are fancier than CSH aliases but are roughly equivelent. Having a hard time getting died in the wool csh users to switch, I added an editing mechanism, similar but more powerful than the tcsh editing/completion/history. Roughly, this is the same as the KSH when you set -o emacs, but predates the ksh's availability and I'll send it to source licensees at for nothing as opposed to whatever the tool chest wants for it. -Ron