[comp.unix.sysv386] The Shell Game

mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (02/11/91)

In article <6422@spdcc.SPDCC.COM> rbraun@spdcc.COM (Rich Braun) writes:
>	Also, I'm curious as to why the cryptic 'sh' user interface
>	has not been replaced with something hi-tech.  I still miss
>	the DEC-20.  As far as I know, 'ksh' still retains the basic
>	look-and-feel of 'sh', though with an Emacs line editor.

It has.  It's called Bash.  The reason it's not in /bin/sh is because
it would break a great deal of things that rely on /bin/sh behaving
a certain way.  The other reason is that /bin/sh is small, lean,
and relatively fast.  Bash is large, unwieldy, and does strange things
sometimes.  When I'm working with something in single-user mode, I
want to have the shell do what I want it to; I don't want to have to fight
with it.

Bash is also GNUware, which means the chances of SCO distributing it
are little to none.

-- 
Marc Unangst                | "I think I have a bad disk.  Even though I
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us   |  folded it to fit into my drive, it still
...!umich!leebai!mudos!mju  |  doesn't work..." -Caller to a tech support line