[PLUG] Re: plug digest, Vol 1 #764 - 1 msg

[Will Andrews]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 07:52:55PM -0500, patrick.t.finnegan.1 (finnegpt@purdue.edu) wrote:
> But this would imply that Korn Shell is *better or *more commonly used
> than bash or tcsh.... I'm sure bash is used my many more people than korn
> shell, and tcsh is (im taking an educated guess) much more powerful (and
> looks alot like C).

Education is about learning how to use tools.. the ones you first
use may not be the best for you nor the most powerful, or any
such subjective judgments.  You're here to *learn* something.

As for bash being used by many more people.. 'use' is not
'programming'.  I'll bet you a couple bucks that most of the
users of bash still have *no* idea how powerful it really is.
(N.B.:  This is not an endorsement of bash on my part.)

As for *csh, see:

	http://www.mars.org/home/rob/docs/csh-whynot.html

This is quite old, but I've never had any good experiences with
the C shell or derivatives, so I don't bother trying to use it.
Perhaps four years of writing Bourne scripts does that to you...

In my humble opinion, writing a script in any shell language
other than good old Bourne is asking for trouble.  If /bin/sh
can't do it, then you need to use a different tool.  See my
previous email about using the right tool for the job.  :)
I doubt that EE's Korn Shell course goes into detail on Korn's
specific qualities.

-- 
wca