Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 05:06:01 +0200 (CEST) From: Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de> To: Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Shells Message-ID: <200004160306.FAA67856@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> In-Reply-To: <200004152356.e3FNup102274@cwsys.cwsent.com>
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(Are shell wars really appropriate to -arch?)
In article <200004152356.e3FNup102274@cwsys.cwsent.com> you write:
> With commit of tcsh, I'd like to raise another question. Are there any
> plans to replace sh with bash. Granted they're not 100% compatible,
> though my only experience with bash vs sh incompatibility was over 6
> years ago on a Linux system,
bash is reputed to execute scripts rather slowly. I don't know if
this still holds true for the current version. It definitely is
rather large, though.
(Side note:
Incompatibilities between bash and sh fall into two categories:
1. Comparing a POSIX shell (bash) with a traditional Bourne shell.
This is a non-issue since our sh is a POSIX shell, too.
2. General upwards compatibility issues, i.e. the existence of
additional pre-defined variables, commands, etc in the name
space. This was already rare those six years ago, and as Linux
has become _a_, if not _the_ major unix platform since, any
offending scripts have been fixed.
I don't think replacing sh by bash is an issue. If there's a
question, then that's whether bash should be _added_ alongside sh.
Note that bash's license (GPL) makes an inclusion into the tree
unattractive.
Personally, I think the addition of a _Korn shell_ should be worth
some consideration. Candidates are pdksh, which is of similar size
to our sh and could quite possibly replace it as well (as done on
OpenBSD), or maybe ksh93, if AT&T's license should allow this.
Some facts:
* {,/usr}/bin/ksh is widely provided on commercial unices and is
actually ksh88 there.
* pdksh implements a substantial subset of ksh88, with some deviations
for POSIX compatibility. It is in the public domain(!).
* ksh93 implements a superset of ksh88, with some deviations for
POSIX compatibility. It is under AT&T's open source(?) license
<URL:http://www.research.att.com/sw/license/ast-open.html>.
(If anybody has managed to actually understand this thing, please
provide details.)
* NetBSD uses pdksh for /bin/ksh (and a relative of our sh for
/bin/sh).
OpenBSD uses pdksh for /bin/sh and /bin/ksh.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de
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