Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!gatech!seismo!brl-tgr!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: Re: Shells, features and interaction Message-ID: <316@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Thu, 5-Dec-85 02:28:54 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.316 Posted: Thu Dec 5 02:28:54 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 6-Dec-85 06:44:24 EST References: <4575@alice.UUCP> <1154@ulysses.UUCP> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 35 Oh boy! Shell wars! > The System V implementation of functions has the following deficiencies > most of which exist in the 8th. edition Bourne shell: Well, Dave, I always thought you were the one who added this feature to the System V shell for Release 2.0; guess I was mistaken. Whoever did it, it would be interesting to hear why the particular design was arrived at and whether it will be improved in future releases. > For the sake of simplicity, the Bourne shell is riddled with little things > that confuse the user. Consider the following list of annoyances of the > 'simple' Bourne shell: > 2. sh script doesn't perform path search for script. Why should it? I would be very upset if it did, since my cwd is last in my $PATH for good and sufficient reasons, and I often am testing new versions of scripts that live in public places. > 8. PATH=/bin:/usr/bin: will not search current directory last. That's simply a bug. I posted a fix for this some time ago. (The fixed version is even simpler and smaller.) > 14. | and ^ are used as synonyms. That was for compatibility, to avoid breaking old shell scripts. I admit that at this point in time it is more just a nuisance. The SVR2 shell is on the verge of becoming too big for 64Kb address space machines such as the PDP-11. Some of us think it would be a shame for UNIX to be unimplementable on small systems due to the shell being too big. Perhaps a subset/superset approach (like sh/ksh) would be best.