[PLUG] korn shell (was Re: plug digest, Vol 1 #764 - 1 msg)

[Will Andrews]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 09:55:12PM -0500, Blake Matheny (bmatheny@purdue.edu) wrote:
>                             Chris is right, because bash is not standard,
> and the original bourne shell lacks many features that ksh93 has, it makes
> ksh more ideal for shell scripting. My only concern with ksh scripts is
> portability. Because of the various versions and implementations of ksh, I
> personally believe that people are better off using bash, but that's just
> my 2 cents.

Korn is found on many commercial environments, mainly because of
its declared standard (as Rick pointed out); but due to years of
being non-free, open-source users shied away from it (yes, I know,
there is a public-domain version, but it lacks a lot of the features
that the original Korn has) -- all the licensing uncertainty
doesn't help that situation.  Bash is commonly found on Open
Source OS's because it's open source, not because there is a
standard.  So you are dealing with a sharp edge when you use
either of these.  However, 25+ years has failed to break the
Bourne shell's hold on the 1st place position in availability.
Everybody recognizes it, and it offers rudimentary capabilities
on most UNIX platforms.  So again: use the right tool for the job.

-- 
wca