Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!kiwi!chet
From: chet@kiwi.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: job control is a bug, not a feature
Message-ID: <346@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu>
Date: 11 Jun 89 19:44:22 GMT
References: <4323@crash.cts.com> <393@sunny.ucdavis.edu>
Sender: news@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu
Reply-To: chet@cwjcc.INS.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey)
Organization: CWRU Andrew R. Jennings Computing Center
Lines: 41

In article <393@sunny.ucdavis.edu> poage@sunny.ucdavis.edu (Tom Poage) writes:
>I get the impression that a number of people dislike csh, but
>have a hard time getting along without job control.

I'm one.  I use job control and windows all the time.

>Anyone care to take a crack at writing an AT&T-free ksh?  :-) Tom.

It's being done, and in more than one place.

Brian Fox, with a little help from the masses (again, I'm one :-), has just
released version 0.99 of bash, the Bourne-Again SHell.  This is the GNU
project's Bourne+ Shell.  It has the job control, command-line editing,
tilde expansion, etc.  that ksh provides in addition to bourne shell
compatibility.  It's really a good shell, already an implementation of the
current POSIX shell specification (part of the output of 1003.2), and I
expect it to pick up more ksh features as time goes on.  The first I'm
expecting is expression evaluation (the (( )) stuff). 

Eric Geisen, at the University of Waterloo, is working on a PD ksh, with full
compatibility as its goal.  I picked up an old version from Toronto (don't 
even try -- they restricted FTP access to it soon after it was announced as
available).  This version had emacs-style editing, job control (both picked
up from the BRL s5r2 shell), nearly full s5r2 sh compatibility, and other
goodies.  I'm sure it's being worked on as well, but no version of it is 
currently available from either Waterloo or Toronto, and Eric has not been
very good about answering mail about availability.


Chet Ramey     Network Services Group, CWRU    chet@cwjcc.INS.CWRU.Edu

	"Unix System V:  From now on, consider it sub-standard"





Chet Ramey     Network Services Group, CWRU    chet@{cwjcc,pirate}.INS.CWRU.Edu

"The flagon with the dragon has the potion with the poison;
	the vessel with the pestle holds the brew that is true!"