[X-Unix]from tcsh to bash

[Doug McNutt]

At 15:09 +0800 5/17/05, sham khalil wrote:
>is bash superior than tcsh? i just need to know

<personal experience>

Starting with OS neXt I was told that I pretty much had to learn bash even though I was fairly experienced with csh from ancient history when the machine belonged to an employer.

So I started writing bash scripts using an O'Reilly book. It was a disaster. My texts in loops just didn't work. It turns out that no one told me, in big enough print, that space characters are a part of  commands and do not just separate arguments. [ (space) expression (space) ] is a construct that threw me for a loop for days. I now know that the single character [ is actually the linked name of a UNIX tool - test - that is being invoked as a separate process.

But, in fact I went back to csh and discovered that it is really tcsh in OS neXt. I have yet to find an example of a bash script that cannot be rewritten in tcsh. Yeah. There probably are such things but for me tcsh is just fine and I don't have to remember to put spaces in.

</personal experience>

What I really want is for Apple's MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) to grow into an alternative shell for OS neXt.

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