In Unix, what are the two main classes of shells?
In Unix, there are two main classes of shells.
The first class consists of the
Bourne shell (sh) and its derivatives, which include
ksh, bash, and zsh. The second
class of shells consists of the C shell (csh) and its
derivative tcsh. In addition, there is rc,
which most people consider to be in a class by itself, although others
argue that rc belongs in the Bourne shell class.
With the classification above, you can write scripts that will work for all the shells from the Bourne shell category, and write other scripts that will work for all of the shells from the C shell category.
Note: This information comes from the Unix
FAQ, which is posted regularly to the Usenet
newsgroups comp.unix.questions and
comp.unix.shell. You can obtain it by FTP from
rtfm.mit.edu in the /pub/usenet directory,
and on the web at:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/
At Indiana University, for personal or departmental Linux or Unix systems support, see At IU, how do I get support for Linux or Unix?
Last modified on August 22, 2008.
