From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Jan 26 1:15:50 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from post.mail.nl.demon.net (post-10.mail.nl.demon.net [194.159.73.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D30AC37B416 for ; Sat, 26 Jan 2002 01:15:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from [212.238.194.207] (helo=tanya.raggedclown.net) by post.mail.nl.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16UOw6-0002BW-00 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG; Sat, 26 Jan 2002 09:15:46 +0000 Received: by tanya.raggedclown.net (tanya.raggedclown.intra, from userid 500) id B61BC452B8; Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:15:45 +0100 (CET) Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:15:45 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: shells confusion Message-ID: <20020126091545.GA1022@raggedclown.net> References: <20020126020430.P175-100000@BLAST> <20020126035658.GC1290@raggedclown.net> <20020126070114.C8FD93FE5@i8k.babbleon.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020126070114.C8FD93FE5@i8k.babbleon.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.24i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 02:01:14AM -0500, Brian T. Schellenberger wrote: > On Friday 25 January 2002 10:56 pm, Cliff Sarginson wrote: > > On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 02:18:16AM +0200, Bernie wrote: > > > hi, > > > > > > i'm planning to learn shell programming but i'm not sure > > > on which one to choose... > > > > > > i've been reading in the 'FreeBSD unleashed' that people > > > wanting to do shell programming should stay away from > > > c-shell as it's realy good for interactive, but very bad > > > for scripts. is this true? > > > > Yes and Yes. > > I would not agree with this at all. I find csh much more readable/sensible > than /bin/sh for interactive use. i (I guess you mean this the other way around, that you think cshell is superior for scripting as well..otherwise the rest of your mail does not make a lot of sense.) > Spaces don't matter; if statements are > vastly more readable, etc. > You are in a very, very tiny minority if you think csh is superior for shell scripting. It may be "better" from some theoretical point of view, but from a practical point of view it is a nightmare for most people. From the point of view of the person's general Unix education I would tell him that cshell scripting is a backwater, and is never likely to be any other way. It is a dodo. But let's not argue about it. I have worked in many different Unix environments, often where the majority of people used tcsh for interactive use. I don't recall any of them regarding it as a serious contender for writing general scripts in. -- Regards Cliff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message