[Info-vax] CLI editing, was: Re: VMS - Virtual Terminals - A security risk way back yonder OR was that an Old Wives Tale ?

[Scott Dorsey]

 <lists at openmailbox.org> wrote:
>
>I only use bash on Linux. I don't like it but much Linux software won't
>build without it. Elsewhere I use whatever the native shell is, on Solaris
>I use zsh which is actually a lot better shell than bash IMHO. Until you
>have to build a Linux app anyway.

Traditionally in the Berkeley world, people used sh for scripts and csh
for login shells.

This is why when Unix first got command recall, it came about with tcsh
which was an extended csh.

In the eighties there were several unix shells which had a lot of experimental
editing features.  BRL Unix had a thing where you could hit ctrl-T in their
sh and see process status.

Note that with Unix today we have two different kinds of command line editing,
one the old method with the bang (supported in csh, bash, and sh but not the
same way in all three), and the new method with command recall (supported in
bash and tcsh and in SOME newer versions of csh and sh but not all).

This is because the original bang method makes good sense on a hardcopy 
console or a glass tty, and it allows very complex command changes on the
fly once you learn it.  But, it's difficult to learn, and people coming in
from the dec world liked command recall, so Unix got that too.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."