Re: [tcsh] disabling autologout?

[Keith Beattie <ksb@icds.org>]

Adam Shand wrote:
> 
> > <PERSONAL_BIAS>
> >   Use bash (instead of tcsh) and ssh (for connecting to remote hosts).
> > </PERSONAL_BIAS>
> 
> running a couple of days behind here but ...
> 
> are there reasons for your personal bias?  i definately agree with using
> ssh for connecting to hosts (auto setting of display variable, encryption,
> encrypted tunnelling of x sessions, rsa authentications etc etc).
> 
> is is there really any advantage to using bash over tcsh?
> 
> i use tcsh because it's what i learned first and now it's familiar... but
> i've been looking for a reason to be bothered swapping over to bash.
> 
> can you convince me?  :)
> 

How 'bout I just tell you why I prefer bash these days.  (I'm not
interested in starting or participating in a "religious war" :)

I (only recently) have started to prefer bash over tcsh for two main
reasons:

1) I find myself working on several different OSs these days: WinNT,
Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, Linux, etc.  Being able to have the same
shell everywhere is nice and I have found bash to be the easiest to
install on all these types of machines.  (autoconf is a beautiful
thing!)

2) Bash is Bourne Shell compatible.  This means that if I'm in a
situation where I cannot install bash, for whatever reason, I'm not
strangled by being unfamiliar with sh-flavor command line behavior.
(I've found that an unconfigured csh is about as friendly as
unconfigured ksh - both of which are found standard on most machines,
whereas bash and tcsh are usually only installed by people like me.)
This point is even stronger for scripts.  Very few scripts I find are
written in csh, so being familiar with Bourne syntax is more
productive.  (csh is supposed to be more "C-like" in it's syntax - I
find this very deceptive.  csh is about as C-like as French is
English-like.  Yes, there are similarities but they are very different
languages.  With bash around making sh as user-friendly as tcsh, I
might as well forget csh and learn sh.  (This is similar to why I
think Java/C can now replace C++, but I digress. :))

Of course this topic cannot be mentioned without the following
reference: http://language.perl.com/versus/csh.whynot

While there are still a few things I prefer about tcsh, I figure bash
can probably to it all, I just need to figure it out...  Reading the
rest of this thread just might be what I need!

Regards,
Keith

ps -  for those unfamiliar with the history of Unix shells:
  sh = Bourne Shell
  csh = C Shell (not sh compatible, a C-like shell)
  ksh = Kron Shell (an extension of sh)
  tcsh = Tenex(?) C shell (an extension of csh)
  bash = Bourne Again Shell (a sh compatible extension of sh with ksh,
         csh and tcsh functionality influence)
 LocalWords:  Kron


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