Re: what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

[Tim X]

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> I tried it once, a few years ago, and found it difficult,
> maybe even unpleasant, to use.  Also never learned how
> to do things I was used to do with tcsh.
>
> And why better (for programming) than bourne?
>
> What I do depends on what you guys say.
>

For shell programming, use /bin/sh if you want portability or /bin/bash
if you want higher level functionality in bash and don't care as much
about portability. 

Avoid csh/tcsh for programming as they don't have some problems with
things like redirection and other 'inconsistencies' in some areas
(though these are mainly fairly advanced scripting techniques that many
won't encounter in basic scripting). Tcsh/csh used to be great for
interactive shells (well they still are), but most if not all the
advantages they offer are now also found in shells like bash. 

eshell is a good little interactive shell within emacs that is very
handy whenyou need to pke around in the filesystem.  However, it has
limitations with respect to redirection and handling ncurses etc, so be
careful using su/sudo or running scripts that use recirection and I
don't think its good at job control e.g. background/foreground jobs etc.

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au