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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-02-13 19:43, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>   <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.

Ahhh. The good old days. :-)

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

I find the use of the term "command recall" confusing here. tcsh gave 
you interactive line editing, while csh had this advanced language for 
recalling and editing previous commands. That is where all the '!'-style 
editing comes from.

> 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.

You know that this is an old DEC feature that people just found so 
useful that it showed up in some Unixes. NetBSD also has it. SIGINFO, 
normally bound to ^T.

But you have it in VMS, Tops-10, TOPS-20, RSTS/E... And probably some 
other OSes that I've forgotten as well.

> 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).

sh actually do not support any kind of line recall and editing. Most 
people nowadays have not even been exposed to sh, and thinks that bash 
is sh...

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol