Questions concerning BaSH

[Chet Ramey]

In article <1991Jan10.183056.20614 at spool.cs.wisc.edu> bothner at sevenlayer.cs.wisc.edu (Per Bothner) writes:

>> = Michael D Mellinger
> = Per Bothner

>>I found BASH 1.05 to be very unstable.
>
>I haven't. Very infrequently (less than once a month),
>I've noticed it freeze up on me, but generally I have no problems.
>
>>I wouldn't use it as my login shell.
>
>I do on my home Sony (68020, bsd 4.3-based), on my friend's
>DECstation3100, and I use it as my main shell (though I haven't
>updated /etc/passwd) on my office DEC3100.

I can't let an opportunity like this go by :-)

(CWRU bash is what is described in the manual page, available for anon
ftp from ftp.cwru.edu (aka cwns2.ins.cwru.edu, 129.22.8.44) in the
directory pub/bash.  Differences from the distributed versions of bash
are in the file CWRU-differences in the same directory.)

Everyone in my department uses CWRU bash as his login shell, and I have 
given it to a number of other departments here, where it is also in daily
use as a login shell.  It has been my login shell since version 0.93.
(Of course, I fix all the problems I find myself.)

It runs as /bin/sh on my home machine (an IBM RT running 4.3 BSD) and on
a pool of RTs here at work.  Again, few or no complaints.  A couple of
people here are writing large shell applications using it -- it's far more
capable than the BSD sh.

>Version 1.06 is long overdue...

Agreed.

>tcsh is ok, but it is a bit of a kludge, and it requires csh
>source. Also, I would advise against writing major macros
>or programs using [t]csh, given that the Posix standard
>(and ksh and bash) are based on Bourne shell syntax.

CWRU Bash is an implementation of the Posix.2 shell spec, as of
draft 9 (and bits of draft 10).  It also includes most of the
Posix.2a spec, as of draft 5.

(I'd advise against writing csh applications anyway; the parser is
flakier than a bowl of cereal.)

>>BTW:  The BASH binary(like most GNU binaries) is quite large.

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.

Chet
-- 
Chet Ramey				``There's just no surf in
Network Services Group			  Cleveland, U.S.A. ...''
Case Western Reserve University
chet at ins.CWRU.Edu		My opinions are just those, and mine alone.