Re: bash or tcsh
On Tue, Sep 14, 1999 at 02:21:09PM +0200, Juli-Manel Merino Vidal wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> This is not a question related to debian, but...
> Which are the differences between bash and tcsh (instead of scripts
> :) ?
>
> Another question:
> tcsh isn't gnu, is it ?
>
I used to be an avid tcsh user and now am an avid bash user. These
decisions are personal really and a perfect example of a religious
war, which I don't want to be involved in but here are my personal
reasons for switching:
1) Installation: At the time I had just started a day job where I had
accounts on several different machine architectures: HP, AIX, Solaris,
etc. Refusing to use ksh, and struggling with trying to install tcsh
on all those platforms, I ended up becoming a bash fan because I could
install it in about 5 minutes from ftp.gnu.org. Autoconf is your
friend.
2) Features: AFAIK, all the features of tcsh are in bash with slight
variations which I now prefer.
3) Documentation: The documentation at www.gnu.org is IMO very, very
good.
4) Scripting: I think it is a joke that csh is named because its
programming is more like C than sh. This is IMO like saying that
Arabic is more like Chinese than French - one might be able to find
specific example where it is true but it is at best misleading.
Almost all scripts I come across are written in sh (for portability
reasons) so I see no need to ever fight with csh/tcsh scripting ever
again. If I need to do write a tricky script I'll do it in perl.
Ok, I done now. :)
ksb
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