Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU> writes:
> So, the question is which shell ought be the shell that is
> recommended for new systems to give to users who don't yet have any
> idea which shell is going to suit them best.  And which will then
> forever impact on what they believe is the "best" interface (in
> general, unless you start on something truly awful, whatever you
> experience first will influence you in that direction for the rest
> of eternity).

This is eminently rational.

> For a long time - for the whole time of the CSRG BSD distributions,
> the best shell for interactive use was (by a wide margin) csh.
> Nothing else really approached it (ksh, of the time anyway, was
> apalling).  Of course, there were some people whose opinions
> differed, but they were in a very small minority.

> Hence, CSRG shipped systems with csh listed as the default shell.   That's
> the rationale - it wasn't because "csh came from here" or "we always ship
> csh as the root shell" or anything else nearly as banal.

And, indeed, for almost ten years, I used csh for just that reason. It 
was the only thing that provided job control and history, and if its
programming syntax was disgusting or if it was horribly buggy, well, I 
could always get around that by invoking sh if need be.

> The question now is which is the best shell to suggest that people should
> learn - that's the one that ought be picked.    If, whatever your personal
> preference for a shell to use might happen to be, you still claim csh is
> the answer to that question, then you have my pity.   Retiring csh (and tcsh
> with it) to the wasteland of unsupported, and eventually, unshipped, software
> would be an entirely reasonable decision to make now.

I don't think /bin/csh can ever be relegated to the dustbin simply
because many people who use it now will be alive for decades and are
used to it and won't switch.

However, I have to say that, now that /bin/sh has command line
editing/history and good job control, and works overall much better
than csh and has superior syntax, there is no point in recommending
/bin/csh for those who do *not* have an "I'm used to it" problem.

Perry