Why do they always focus on bash (or mysql, or php, or whatever). 90% of the art...

scott_s · on Aug 25, 2009

I almost exclusively use bash. Not because of a particular love of bash, but just because that's the default install on Linux (and even OSX). Consequently, I don't know what the real differences are between bash and other shells.

It's possible the author is like me: because he's not familiar with what the differences between the shells are, he can't say what does and does not apply to other shells.

blasdel · on Aug 25, 2009

The differences:

  * zsh has a ton of interactive chrome built-in, and a lot of it is on by default.
      This leads to some incompatibility with bash for scripting purposes
      the contextual completion stuff is infuriating when it's overly restrictive
  
  * A pure bourne shell (like dash) by nature doesn't support bashisms
      like $() as an alternative to ``
      On almost all gnu systems /bin/sh is a link to bash 
        which checks $0 and operates in sh mode
      Unfortunately bash's sh mode is completely broken
        it allows most bash-specific syntax
        so almost a lot of Linux users's #!/bin/sh scripts really need bash

The takeaway is that you should give up and use bash, or write your own shell if you're an asshole (I have done this).

jrschulz · on Aug 25, 2009

Command substitution using $(...) is valid POSIX syntax, not a bashism.

   $ /bin/dash
   $ echo $(uname -r)
   2.6.31-rc7

jrockway · on Aug 25, 2009

or write your own shell if you're an asshole

Eshell.

It is nice to write "shell scripts" like "(loop for i in *.el do (byte-compile-file i))".