CentOS - Apr 2015 - Real sh? Or other efficient shell for non-interactive scripts

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 10:38:25AM -0400, m.roth at 5-cent.us
wrote:
> Fascinating. As I'd been in Sun OS, and started doing admin work when
it
> became Solaris, I'd missed that bit. A question: did the license
agreement
> include payment, or was it just restrictive on distribution?
In 1990, when I started using ksh88, it was totally commercial.  Binaries
were $$$ and source was $$$$.  We bought the source and compiled it for
SunOS, Ultrix and various SYSVr[23] machines (one machine was so old it
didn't understand #! and so needed it placed as /bin/sh).

By 1998, ksh93 was free (as in beer) but was restricted distribution.
Eventually ksh93 became properly free, but by this point bash was
already popular in the Free-nix arena and had even made it into
Solaris, AIX and others.
> I didn't know bash till I got to CentOS (I don't remember it in RH
9...),
Yes it was.  It was in RH(not EL) 4, which was the first RH I used.

Even the 0.11 "boot+root" combination from 1991 had a version of bash
in it!
  http://gunkies.org/wiki/Linux_0.11
(that was the first Linux version I used)

-- 

rgds
Stephen

Stephen Harris wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 10:38:25AM -0400, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
>> Fascinating. As I'd been in Sun OS, and started doing admin work
when it
>> became Solaris, I'd missed that bit. A question: did the license
>> agreement include payment, or was it just restrictive on distribution?
>
> In 1990, when I started using ksh88, it was totally commercial.  Binaries
> were $$$ and source was $$$$.  We bought the source and compiled it for
> SunOS, Ultrix and various SYSVr[23] machines (one machine was so old it
> didn't understand #! and so needed it placed as /bin/sh).
I just (finally) got into Unix in '91, and didn't do any admin work,
just
programming, until later in '95, and I had nothing to do with what
software got installed, at least to start (I sat there while someone else
was doing the installing). And that was a Sun, anyway.
>
> By 1998, ksh93 was free (as in beer) but was restricted distribution.
> Eventually ksh93 became properly free, but by this point bash was
> already popular in the Free-nix arena and had even made it into
> Solaris, AIX and others.
>
>> I didn't know bash till I got to CentOS (I don't remember it in
RH
>> 9...),
>
> Yes it was.  It was in RH(not EL) 4, which was the first RH I used.
Ah. I don't remember if I was using csh, or ksh, and didn't realize
about
bash. I *think* I vaguely remember that sh seemed to be more capable than
I remembered.

My first RH was 5, late nineties. First time I looked at linux and
installed, it was '95, and slack. (We'll ignore the Coherent that I
installed on my beloved 286 in the late 80's).
<snip>
          mark

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 3:04 PM,  <m.roth at 5-cent.us>
wrote:
> >
> My first RH was 5, late nineties. First time I looked at linux and
> installed, it was '95, and slack. (We'll ignore the Coherent that I
> installed on my beloved 286 in the late 80's).
> <snip>
You mean you missed all the fun with Xenix on Radio Shack Model 16's
and SysV on AT&T's weird 3b machines?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 10:38:25AM -0400, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> > Fascinating. As I'd been in Sun OS, and started doing admin work
when it
> > became Solaris, I'd missed that bit. A question: did the license
agreement
> > include payment, or was it just restrictive on distribution?
>
> In 1990, when I started using ksh88, it was totally commercial.  Binaries
> were $$$ and source was $$$$.  We bought the source and compiled it for
> SunOS, Ultrix and various SYSVr[23] machines (one machine was so old it
> didn't understand #! and so needed it placed as /bin/sh).
But around 1991 1992, the first Solaris-2.x (SunOS-5.1) came out and this 
included the Korn Shell for no additional costs.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

<m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> Ah. I don't remember if I was using csh, or ksh, and didn't realize
about
> bash. I *think* I vaguely remember that sh seemed to be more capable than
> I remembered.
If you like to check what the Bourne Shell did support in the late 1980s, I 
recommend you to fetch recent Schily tools from:

	https://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/

compile and install and test "osh".

This is the SVr4 Bourne Shell, so you need to take into account what has been 
added with Svr4:

-	multibyte character support. In the 1980s, the Bourne Shell was just
	8-bit clean.

-	job-control. If you do not call "jsh", or if you switch off
jobcontrol
	via "set +m" in a job shell, you have the job-control related
builtins
	but there is no processgroup management.

J?rg

-- 
 EMail:joerg at schily.net                    (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353
Berlin
       joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog:
http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL:  http://cdrecord.org/private/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/'