*BSD News Article 84026


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Serious brain damage in /bin/sh for FreeBSD 2.1.5
Date: 1 Dec 1996 21:14:26 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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"Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> As to ksh, I think that our /bin/sh doesn't even come close so it's hard
> to argue that its author even intended in making "ash" a ksh clone.
> More likely this was simple creeping featurism, and I for one wouldn't
> argue at all if features like emacs/vi command line and history editing
> were ripped right back out again.  If I want that kind of comfy
> environment, I'll use bash (and I do).  /bin/sh should be a lean, mean,
> standard by-the-book bourne shell and that's it.

Nah, it was merely an attempt to posixize this shell.  The added
command line editing was rather a side-product of the already existing
libedit, i think.  (It didn't exist in pre-4.4BSD versions, as in
FreeBSD 1.)  Alas, libedit is fairly bloated.  OTOH, the command-line
editing functionality comes _very_ handy in single-user mode or even
on a fixit floppy, and that's where you're normally at your own with
all that other foobar shells around...

Btw., Stan Brown meanwhile wrote me that all of his headaches were
solved by testing for $KSH_VERSION (which is also present in the
pdksh, as well as of course in the genuine version).

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)