Re: terminology/concept questions
On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, David Miles wrote:
> I appreciate your response.
>
> Another question or so:
>
> 1) Are shells geared toward specific tasks?... such as program creation, a
> shell built to specifically offer enhanced compiling and program
> generation capabilities? another perhaps for graphics of some sort?
>
Your question is not speciific enough to provide a focused response to.
In a sense there are two forms of shell.
Group 1:
The first is written to be generic enough to enable the user to do
program execution of any sort. The bash, sh, csh and ksh shells
belong to this group.
Some offer enhancements in the form of simple control of flow
statements and looping mechanisms. These along with shell
variables form a simple programming environment.
Many of these shells (sh and bash are two) come standard with
many linux distributions (sh in fact comes ``standard'' - of
sorts - with most unix like systems). This forms the basis for
many simple unix tools on the basis that it is far faster
and easier since we can write scripts in a shell's
defined language and have a shell execute them. Of note is
that a shell's programming language is augmented by unix
commands and utilities.
Group 2:
You will find some rather task enhanced shells in this
category. Some would call these intepreters - and this
is open for debate.
Of note is the wish shell for tcl/tk development.
And then we get emacs - which is probably the most
generalised task oriented shell available - also
open for debate. Note - to each his some. Some people
do use emacs as their root environment. Others (me included)
use it to code and document. Most other things are relegated
to another shell (once again, in my case this is bash).
I don't know of any shells oriented to graphics display but maybe
gnuplot can be classified as such (assuming we take plotting to
be graphics).
So you see - in answering your question I left muuch more
open. It's not a simple one. To some shells define
a working environment. To others they're just a program
that allows you to do things.
One thing is important though: Shells need to be interactive
tools (and thus most likely relegated to the intepreter based
class of apps). They must provide an environment in which
a user can get the job done.
Cheers,
|----| Poobalan Murphy Arumugam |----|
| <> | Tel: +27 11 463 7509 | <> |
| || | Fax: +27 11 463 8199 | || |
| || | http://www.murphypa.co.za/ | || |
| <> | work: murphypa@peresys.com | <> |
| || | other: murphypa@icon.co.za | || |
| || | personal: unixdude@murphypa.co.za | || |
| <> | http://www.murphypa.co.za/pgp | <> |
|----|-----------------------------------|----|
|pgp | not yet | pgp|
|---------------------------------------------|
| Linux -> Spoil Your Computer __ Ward Bekker |
|---------------------------------------------|
^^^ Still not :-) with this ^^^
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