Re: [dev] [question] Does bash suck?

From: Kamil Cholewiński <harry666t_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 15:38:54 +0200

On Sat, 23 Apr 2016, Marc Collin <marc.collin7_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi.
> Recently a user from suckless told me that bash sucks, but before I
> could ask why he went offline.
> I tried looking at suckless.org page about software that sucks, but
> couldn't find anything about bash.
> I can imagine why it sucks - no portability! #/bin/sh should be
> enough for everyone. Is that it or is something else to the matter?
> Maybe an entry to suckless.org suck page could be good to clarify
> things and also warn new users.
> Best wishes.

TL;DR all shells suck horribly.

Bash is slow, buggy, incompatible, security disaster, bloated, quirky.

If you'd like a slow, buggy, bloated and quirky shell that sucks just
slightly less than bash and has more features, try zsh.

mksh is very nice for interactive use, but lacks edit undo (C-_), which
drives me mad. Also it's always trying to fit a long command on a single
line by scrolling it horizontally, which makes mouse copy-pasting a
total pain.

OpenBSD's ksh is excellent, but not sure if it was ever ported anywhere
else. Also it shares mksh's insane input line scrolling thing.

csh is insane for scripting. Also I don't want to bother using an
interactive shell if it's not (more or less) the same language I could
use for scripts.

I don't like rc since there are two incompatible implementations, one is
the real thing and the other is actually usable for interactive use.

For scripting, use #!/bin/sh, but do yourself a favor and if you're
bound to go over the 1000 LOC mark, use Lua, Python, Perl, etc instead.

K.
Received on Sat Apr 23 2016 - 15:38:54 CEST