Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

> From my reading on the web linux has the following shells:

ash and bash (clones of UNIX Bourne shell bsh)
sh - don't know what this is, another clone of bsh?

csh (C shell) and its enhanced tcsh (The C shell)

Korn shell (ksh) and pdksh (public domain ksh) and its enhancement
zsh (which emulates sh and ksh)

SW4.0 has packages for
ash
bash
tcsh
zsh

I also saw mention of sash (standalone sh) and scsh (scheme sh).

The shadow.tgz package has chsh (change shell) to let users change shells 
after logging in:

chsh -s bash
changes to bash.

I have installed bash and tcsh from SW40 and I will install also the full 
ash (package around 50K) and maybe zsh (about 350K including a 
spell-checker, which my dyslexic partner might appreciate).

These shells have various associated files.

Ash appears to use profile (and .profile?).
Bash has .profile and profile
Csh and tcsh use .login and .cshrc
Zsh uses lots of files such as .zlogin and .zshenv/zshenv and .zshrc.

The default shell at sdf.lonestar.org is ksh, so I may not install it 
locally.  Or maybe there are differences between sdf's NetBSD and BL3 
linux as regards the shells.  Our local bbs offers bash, csh, tcsh and 
maybe others.

What are the advantages of these various shells other than the spell 
checker?

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org