want shell should I learn 10
To each his-her own.
Not true. A Bourne (or POSIX) script can be run in almost any shell except for tcsh-csh. You don't have to unlearn the basic syntax. The problem with the C shell is...
If you have learned bash-ksh-zsh, you'd have to unlearn it to write in csh. The familiarity-relearning issue is basically symmetrical.
For scripts, I realize csh has its limitations. Of course, so do the other shells. For tasks too complex for a shell script, there's always Perl. The following are my reasons for using csh for both interactive use and scripts:
- I don't want the mental confusion from having to deal with two syntactically different shells.
Do you mean "self-consistent"? One of the first lessons I was taught about csh is you should put a space before and after the parens. I'm not...
- The bash method for directing stdout and-or stderr is to append. Append a '!' to force file overwriting if you have set noclobber.
- I could not stomach the infantile joke of using spelling 'case' and 'if' backwards instead of something more adult like maybe 'end', 'endif', or 'endcase' (not actually used in any shell I'm aware of).
- The syntax and method for evaluating conditional expressions is entirely too primitive: calling an external binary called '', 'if' or 'test' and having it parse the arguments looking for a ''. The evaluation method might have improved, but the syntax is still ugly.
Again, to each his-her own.
-- Robert Riches (Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)
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