On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Rudolf Sykora <rudolf.syk...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello,
Howdy. > I am just curious... > Here > http://9fans.net/archive/2007/11/120 > > Russ Cox writes he uses bash as his default shell. Does anybody know > the reason? Is this for practicality within the linux environment? Or > has he found rc too limiting? So rc is a nice shell, but it's most useful in a particular environment that has evolved with it in a very pleasant way. If one is constrained to work outside of that environment, then rc isn't so much better than any other shell. Note that I'm not referring to the implementation; rc is certainly nicer than bash in this sense, but rather the tangible function from a user perspective. If one is in an environment where the majority of one's coworkers are stuck using bash and one needs to retain shell-level compatibility with them for some reason or another, then it makes sense to use bash, as aesthetically unpleasing as that may be. One has to ask oneself, is rc worth it? If the level of productivity increase that came from using rc instead of bash was greater than the cost of maintaining a custom environment built around rc, then one would might make an argument for using it. But how many of us can honestly say that's the benefits are so great? The basic command, pipe and stdout redirection syntax is the same. It's the same if I want to run a process or pipeline in the background. I can set the prompts to be the same and configure things so that copy/paste works in an identical fashion across the two. And those are the VAST majority of things I do with a shell; to be honest, 99% of the time, I don't even think about what shell I'm running; regardless of what it is. And rc is not perfect. I've always felt like the 'if not' stuff was a kludge. - Dan C.
