August 1999
Beginner
760 pages
23h 55m
English
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Shells
As we said before, logging in to the system puts you into a shell (or a graphical interface if your system is configured to use a display manager). So does opening an xterm window in X. The shell interprets and executes all your commands. Let’s look a bit at different shells before we keep going, because they’re going to affect some of the material coming up.
If it seems confusing that Unix offers many different shells, just accept it as an effect of evolution. Believe us, you wouldn’t want to be stuck using the very first shell developed for Unix, the Bourne shell. While it was a very powerful user interface for its day (the mid-1970s), it lacked a lot of useful features for interactive use—including the ones shown in this section. So other shells have been developed over time, and you can now choose the one that best suits your way of working.
Some of the shells available on Linux are:
- bash
Bourne Again shell. The most commonly used (and most powerful) shell on Linux. POSIX-compliant, compatible with Bourne shell, created and distributed by the GNU project (Free Software Foundation). Offers command-line editing, history substitution, and Bourne Shell compatibility.
- csh
C shell. Developed at Berkeley. Mostly compatible with the Bourne shell for interactive use, but has a very different interface for programming. Does not offer command-line editing, although it does have a sophisticated alternative called history substitution.
- ksh
Korn shell. Perhaps the most popular on ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.