Todd Walton wrote:
I'm learning to use FreeBSD, and the default shell is kinda bugging
me. I think it's csh. I'm not a programmer. I'm pretty good with
bash though. For some reason, this shell isn't autocompleting for me.
Not like I'm used to anyway. It only autocompletes if there's one
possible completion candidate.
Anyway, if I'm diving into BSD, should I learn to use a new shell? Is
there any worth in that? I'm not really interested in learning a new
shell for manliness reasons. There'd have to be some intellectual
payoff. Should I break out of my shell?
Well, you should learn *true* Bourne shell aka sh in order so that you
can write proper bootscripts. Other than that, no.
It used to be that the big advantages of both sh and csh under FreeBSD
were that they were statically linked. Consequently, if you truly hosed
your system, but could still log in, you could use the shell. IIRC,
that is no longer the case (although there is a recovery area/CD in
which that is true so that you can unhose your system in an emergency).
Personally, I always change my shells on FreeBSD over to bash. I like
and make use of the extra functionality when I'm doing command line stuff.
I don't bother with the csh/tcsh ilk anymore. If I'm concerned about
readability, maintenance, etc. I shouldn't be using a shell scripting
language anyhow. I should be using Python, Tcl, Perl, etc. And, if I
have to write a boot script, I should be writing in sh anyhow. The
csh/tcsh derivatives are just wasted brain cells for me anymore.
-a
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