Re: ash vs. bash

[Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com>]

Steve Lamb <morpheus@rpglink.com> wrote:
>     Can you explain why one would want an interactive shell doing
> non-interactive work and vice versa?  To be honest, I never really got the
> logic of having scripting build into an interactive shell since they serve
> two different purposes.

(1) it's easier to learn a language that you can use interactively than
one that only works in some "file at a time" mode.

(2) it's often convenient to write a short script at the command line to
accomplish some one-off task.  [If I'm doing a task a lot, I'll gradually
accrete a set of tools dedicated to that task.  Early on they're purely
interactive commands, then short aliases and maybe small scripts, and
once I've formalized the work I might write a dedicated program or set
of programs for the task.]

There is no real distinction between interactive and non-interactive
work in the general case.

-- 
Raul