Questions concerning BaSH

[Jeff Sparkes]

In <1991Jan10.235258.17202 at convex.com> tchrist at convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:

>From the keyboard of chet at po.CWRU.Edu:
>:It was not `written small' like sh.  It actually uses the C library.
>:It does not have some of the built-in size limits of sh.  The line
>:editing code takes up a tremendous amount of space.

>Plus, last time I checked, the vi mode was vastly inferior to ksh's.
>I know I should go play with it more so I can supply precise 
>objections to the developers, who've always seemed quite amenable
>to input.  Someday...

I'm the main author of the vi mode stuff, but I haven't done much lately.  I
have a fairly complete vi emulation done (the only thing I haven't done is
implement ".", which is a royal pain in the current setup), and have mailed
it off to Brian Fox several times.  Of course, it's been so long since
version 1.05 that I've practically given up doing anymore work on it because
any diffs I produce will probably be pretty hard to apply to the core
readline.c code.  Besides, the emacs bigots always give us vi types a lot of
grief.  Look at some of the comments they've put into bash.

By the way, I do use bash as my login shell.  I used to work on and use the
pd-ksh written by Eric Gisin, but gave up after being unable to communicate
with him for a long period of time.  I didn't feel right about distributing
a modified version without his support.  At least with bash my work is going
towards an evolving product.  Or it used to; who knows anymore.
--
Jeff Sparkes jsparkes at bnr.ca	Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa (613)765-2503
Another feature is that the seats float, so that the airline can recover
them if the plane crashes into the ocean. -- Dave Barry