[net.unix-wizards] Is 'ksh' available.

jos@anwar.UUCP (John Schneider) (11/08/84)

A few people at my company (including myself) have expressed an 
intrest in 'ksh'. I have seen 'ksh' scripts on the net occasionally
and have read about it in Kochan & Wood's "Exploring the Unix System".
I do not know much else about it and would appreciate any sending 
me some documentation and or source (this is the "is it available"
question). I would also like to know when ATT plans to distribute 
it (for my own knowledge). 	
				Thanks in advance,
					jos.
					John Schneider.
					decvax!philabs!hhb!jos

gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (11/12/84)

My impression is that the Korn shell is not generally available
outside AT&T.  Meanwhile, various ksh-like features have been
appearing in the official Bourne shell.  At BRL, Ron Natalie has
added csh-style job control to the SVR1 and SVR2 Bourne shells;
of course, this works only on kernels having appropriate support
(i.e., 4.1BSD & 4.2BSD; don't know about 2.9BSD).  This means
we now have shell functions (generalization of csh "alias"),
built-in "echo" & "pwd" (I fixed the symbolic-link behavior of
"pwd" for 4.2BSD to act like something sensible instead of
following ".." literally), and job control.  About the only csh
feature still lacking is a command history mechanism; probably
a tcsh-like editing facility but without using termcap would be
the way to go for this.

	Committee to Stamp Out Csh

dave@uwvax.UUCP (Dave Cohrs) (11/12/84)

> This means
> we now have shell functions (generalization of csh "alias"),
> built-in "echo" & "pwd" (I fixed the symbolic-link behavior of
> "pwd" for 4.2BSD to act like something sensible instead of
> following ".." literally), and job control.  About the only csh
> feature still lacking is a command history mechanism; probably
> a tcsh-like editing facility but without using termcap would be
> the way to go for this.
> 
> 	Committee to Stamp Out Csh

What? No history?  Listen man, this is probably the one feature I
wouldn't give up from csh.  I hate having to retype commands, especially
when they get long.  If by tcsh editing facility you man yanking/putting
and screen editing, this is fine for stuff on your screen, but not
very useful when the command has scrolled off of your screen, or worse
yet, was something you previously executing 50 commands ago.

	The Committee to Preserve useful 4.2BSD Features
-- 
(Bug?  What bug?  That's a feature!)

Dave Cohrs
...!{allegra,heurikon,ihnp4,seismo,uwm-evax}!uwvax!dave
dave@wisc-rsch.arpa

rwl@uvacs.UUCP (Ray Lubinsky) (11/13/84)

> My impression is that the Korn shell is not generally available
> outside AT&T.  Meanwhile, various ksh-like features have been
> appearing in the official Bourne shell.  At BRL, Ron Natalie has
:
:
> 	Committee to Stamp Out Csh

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm intrigued.  Could somebody in the know please post a brief description of
ksh?  What makes it so much better than csh (or sh, for that matter)?  Is it
easier to program?  More convenient for command-line operations?  What?

Thanks in advance!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ray Lubinsky		     University of Virginia, Dept. of Computer Science
			     uucp: decvax!mcnc!ncsu!uvacs!rwl

henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (11/13/84)

> ... this is fine for stuff on your screen, but not
> very useful when the command has scrolled off of your screen, or worse
> yet, was something you previously executing 50 commands ago.

As the Gospel According To Saint Pike makes clear, terminals should not
let stuff scroll off without your permission.  Furthermore, if there is
any likelihood that you will want it again, it should be saved somewhere.
By a centralized facility, not by code built into every interactive command
interpreter.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

jkh@ski.UUCP (Jordan K. Hubbard) (11/14/84)

> 
> A few people at my company (including myself) have expressed an 
> intrest in 'ksh'. I have seen 'ksh' scripts on the net occasionally
> and have read about it in Kochan & Wood's "Exploring the Unix System".
> I do not know much else about it and would appreciate any sending 
> me some documentation and or source (this is the "is it available"
> question). I would also like to know when ATT plans to distribute 
> it (for my own knowledge). 	
> 				Thanks in advance,
> 					jos.
> 					John Schneider.
> 					decvax!philabs!hhb!jos

Me too! Me too! Anybody got it?