On Sat, 5 Jun 2010 22:35:09 +0000, Giorgos Tsiapaliokas <terie...@gmail.com> wrote: > hello, > i am coming from the linux world where i was using the bash shell but > i found out that there are also much more. > > can u tell me the basic differences between them?(pros and cons)
It isn't humanly possible to write *all* the differences of *all* the shells in a single email reply. But you can find a good table that compares various shells in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_command_shells In a FreeBSD context there are also a few more things to consider when comparing shells: * Is the shell part of the base system or a port/package? * Is the shell well maintained? * Does the shell depend on many other ports or none at all? * Does the shell support building static-only copies? This is useful if you want to upgrade the base system without breaking the login shell you are using every day. Having said that, here are a few personal notes from my own experience with shells on FreeBSD... The /bin/sh and /bin/csh shells are part of the base system, so they are rebuilt as part of the normal buildworld process. The big advantage of using a shell that is part of the base system is that it's always there. Any shell scripts or code you write that uses these shells will have a great chance of running on ANY FreeBSD system out there. That's where traditionalism stops and personal preference jumps in though... I don't like using csh(1) for a lot of things. It syntax makes me cringe, even though it's a mostly "ok" interactive shell. So I always install at least bash and mksh on my systems. There is no bash shell in the *base* system of FreeBSD. But there are many ports for command shells, and bash is part of these: # cd /usr/ports/shells 44bsd-csh dash jailkit pdksh tcshrc Makefile es ksh93 pear-PHP_Shell v7sh bash esh lshell psh viewglob bash-completion fd mksh rc vshnu bash-static fish nologinmsg rssh wapsh bash3 flash osh sash zoidberg bash3-static gscommander p5-Shell-Perl scponly zsh bashc heirloom-sh p5-Term-ShellUI shell-include ch ibsh pash tcsh_nls # You can always install bash with "pkg_add". The default package is not built as a static binary, but you can compile a static bash binary from its port: # cd /usr/ports/shells/bash # make WITH_STATIC_BASH=1 install clean The bash shell depends on two other ports: gettext and libiconv. These are not large ports, but it is often a good idea to have a shell around that only depends on libc. This is why I also install 'shells/mksh' on my systems. It's the ksh compatible shell of the MirOS BSD folks. It has a small foot-print, a ksh-compatible syntax, and it depends only on libc.so: keram...@kobe:/home/keramida$ ldd `which mksh` /usr/local/bin/mksh: libc.so.7 => /lib/libc.so.7 (0x280c9000) _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
