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From: toby@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Toby Harness)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Relative speed of Bourne vs. C Shells - C Shell is faster.
Message-ID: <396@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Apr-85 14:30:05 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.396
Posted: Tue Apr  2 14:30:05 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Apr-85 02:40:24 EST
References: <216@sdcc12.UUCP> <12138@watmath.UUCP> <1778@seismo.UUCP> <>
Reply-To: toby@gargoyle.UUCP (Toby Harness)
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 33
Summary: 

In article <> gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) writes:
>There are really two good reasons for using the Bourne/Korn shell
>for scripts:
>	(1)  The shell is available on every post-Sixth Edition UNIX.
>	(2)  It has a formal grammar.
>The usual arguments:
>	(3)  It is faster.
>	(4)  It is more readable.
>aren't nearly as important.

Doug makes a good point:  everyone has the Bourne shell.  In general,
people should write all their scripts in it.  Why then does every other
shell need to duplicate what it provides?

What ever happened to the notion of 'tools'?  Why does a command interpreter
have to be an interactive programming language?

Like many people reading this, I use (t)csh as my command interpreter, but
write shell scripts in the Bourne shell.  Except for a few things like
'while 1' or 'foreach', I don`t use many of csh`s programming constructs.
If I need to do something fancy, I first type 'sh'.  On the other hand,
I am always using history, job control (when available), and aliases.

Instead, what about a shell that has extensive file, command, and
directory name features (tcsh`s command completion is a good example), but
little programming ability.  It could be coupled with a variety of
script command languages (that of course could read from stdin) with
different styles of syntax:  sh is algol-like; how about lisp (imagine
programming a shell with mock-lisp), or prolog, or whatever you like.


Toby Harness		Ogburn/Stouffer Center, University of Chicago
			...ihnp4!gargoyle!toby