[colug-432] Why Bourne Shell Compatible: Portability

[Richard Troth]

Chris spake:
>  I was shocked when I discovered that /bin/sh linked to something other
>  than the bourne shell.  This small discovery later lead to my
>  understanding that practically all Linux distro's seem do this.  I guess
>  it makes sense as most *sh shells are backwards complaint with sh.  But
>  my assumption that shebanging /bin/sh got me the plain ole original is
>  not correct.  And, well, we all know what happens when you assume...

Common shells I have built (because I try to maintain a vanilla Linux
system) include

        bash
        pdksh
        zsh
        tcsh <<< NOT BOURNE
        dash
        ... and to some extent ash by way of BusyBox

Of these, all are Bourne compatible except for TCSH, which is a CSH variant.

Back in my day (ahem!) the question was "are you a C shell guy or a
Bourne shell guy?".  Those of us using BASH were delighted to find
more and more shells which were Bourne compatible.  Biggest reason I
used BASH was for that wonderful command retrieval.  Scripting didn't
need to change.  The Bourne proper subset was enough.

-- R;   <><