On Wed, Feb 10, 1999 at 09:46:40AM +0100, J.H.M. Dassen wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 09, 1999 at 15:29:38 -0500, Bob Hilliard wrote:
> > This reference should be deleted, or the URL updated.
>
> >From http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/ I gather the
> canonical URL nowadays is
> ftp://perl.com/pub/perl/versus/csh.whynot.gz
I think this section should be removed from policy. This document
contains some (very arguable) reasons why new scripts should not be written
in csh, but absolutely no reasons why upstream csh scripts should not be used.
Also, the document points out a lack of features in csh. If you don't need
those features, it's just as good as bash.
This requirement is just as bad as `all scripts on Debian must be written
in emacs'.
Looking at a few sections:
1. FILE DESCRIPTORS
The most common problem encountered in csh programming is that
you can't do file-descriptor manipulation. All you are able to
do is redirect stdin, or stdout, or dup stderr into stdout.
Bourne-compatible shells offer you an abundance of more exotic
possibilities.
///
Big deal. I doubt you need these options very often, especially in scripts
(and maintainer scripts even more so).
A lot of this section contains things that are really hideous to do in bash,
which is probably why you wouldn't want to do them in csh.
///
% time | echo
which while nonsensical, shouldn't give me this message:
Reset tty pgrp from 9341 to 26678
///
Maybe in csh; works fine in tcsh.
///
% alias lu 'ls -u'
% lu
HISTORY News bin fortran lib lyrics misc tex
Mail TEX dehnung hpview logs mbox netlib
% repeat 3 lu
lu: Command not found.
lu: Command not found.
lu: Command not found.
% time lu
lu: Command not found.
//
OK, that's annoying. But you wouldn't be doing it in scripts most likely.
//
If you have a stopped job:
[2] Stopped rlogin globhost
You should be able to kill it with
% kill %?glob
kill: No match
//
Works fine on tcsh.
//
As distributed, quoting history references is a challenge. Consider:
% mail adec23!alberta!pixel.Convex.COM!tchrist
alberta!pixel.Convex.COM!tchri: Event not found.
//
Doesn't work on bash either.
bash-2.01$ mail adec23!alberta!pixel.Convex.COM!tchrist
bash: !alberta!pixel.Convex.COM!tchrist: event not found
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3TYD [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Latest Debian packages at ftp://ftp.rising.com.au/pub/hamish. PGP#EFA6B9D5
CCs of replies from mailing lists are welcome. http://hamish.home.ml.org
