8/22 Nowadays everyone tells me csh/tcsh sucks. I started my
undergraduate at Cal in 1990, and all of my first UNIX accounts
defaulted to csh. Given that csh wasn't the standard shell in UNIX
and it looks like all the other more advanced shells (bash, ksh, ...)
seem to have existed back then, why weren't new students set up to
learn one of those shells right at the beginning?
\_ *csh sucks for scripting, but for normal, daily, interactive
use tcsh is probably more intuitive. A well-config'ed bash
environment is every bit as good as tcsh (perhaps better w/
respect to using scripts) but takes a little more effort to
configure.
\_ last i checked bash's completions weren't as buff as tcsh's..
of course zsh is DA POWER SHELL
\_ bash's prompt doesn't do colors/hiliting.
\_ not a big deal
\_ all else being equal, it makes tcsh a better interactive
shell.
\_ All thing being equal, not being able to do the
equivalent of "command 2> errors " makes tcsh worse
interactive shell for me.
\_ what about >& in tcsh?
\_ in tcsh: (command > /dev/tty) >& errors
\_ yes, but that's a silly kludge.
\_ I just love how tcsh has different syntaxes for set and
setenv. brilliant.
\_ Because in 1990, csh could be found in nearly every form of *NIX
that had existed for the last five years. Think LCD. What good
is it to know tcsh when you're doing work on an SCO box at LBL?
It's why you learn "vi" or "ed." Because sometimes you're on a
POS without modern tools. Bearskins and stone knives, my friend. |