[9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Geoff Collyer]

This isn't directly Plan 9 related, but may be of interest
to this audience.  Brantley Coile asked me a few months back
if I had a simple (Unixy) shell for modern Unixes, which prompted me
to retrofit the memory-management, directory-reading and a few other
changes described in `A Partial Tour Through the UNIX Shell' into
the V7 shell (now that it's freely available courtesy of SCO).
It should run on POSIXy systems and been run under APE and on the
BSDs and Linux on x86 PCs without trouble.  Among its other features,
it lacks the GNU readline library, so what you type is what you get.
It's also smaller than even rc (at least on Plan 9):

	; size /bin/v7sh /bin/rc
	69771t + 13580d + 5756b = 89107	/bin/v7sh
	81881t + 10268d + 13528b = 105677	/bin/rc

You can find it at http://www.collyer.net/~geoff/v7sh.tar.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[a]

cool. downloaded, built, and installed on my OS X
laptop. for bonus points, got an updated man page?

what ever will i do without tab completion?
ア

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Geoff Collyer]

I've update v7sh.tar to include a modified V7 sh manual page and a
defs.h with many "extern" keywords added to appease C implementations
with non-`relaxed' ref/def models, which apparently exist nowadays
even on Lunix.  A few definitions of variables are probably still
needed for uptight ref/def implementations.

I apologise for the ugly manual page; it probably looks right on
Lunix, but the B font is sometimes bold and sometimes constant-width
on Plan 9, and the L and F fonts don't necessarily exist on Lunix.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Taj Khattra]

On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 07:03:40PM -0800, Mike Haertel wrote:
> It doesn't even support # comments, for example.

maybe v7 sh didn't, but the one Geoff posted does

-taj

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Mike Haertel]

One thing to keep in mind about the V7 sh is that it is a long
way from conforming to the Posix sh specification.  It doesn't
even support # comments, for example.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Geoff Collyer]

I should perhaps clarify that this is a V7 sh, from Steve Bourne, not
a clone, with minor additions, that should run on most POSIX-like
systems; it is not a POSIX-compliant sh.

Its great virtues are simplicity and predictability, unlike most
modern Lunix shells.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Brantley Coile]

I've been using the new V7sh for several months now
and have really enjoyed it.  Many programmers I meet these days
have never been exposed to something as simple yet as powerful as
the original Bourne shell.  Usually the man page for bash alone
will cause one to abondon hope of knowing all the functions.
The Bourne shell, like C, is simple enough to know all of it.
It's not perfect, but as Geoff said, it is simple and predictable.

 Brantley

On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 20:09:41 -0800, Geoff Collyer <geoff@collyer.net> wrote:

> I should perhaps clarify that this is a V7 sh, from Steve Bourne, not
> a clone, with minor additions, that should run on most POSIX-like
> systems; it is not a POSIX-compliant sh.
>
> Its great virtues are simplicity and predictability, unlike most
> modern Lunix shells.
>
>

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Rob Pike]

it's the v8 shell that i would like to have.

-rob

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Dan Cross]

Rob Pike <rob@mightycheese.com> writes:
> it's the v8 shell that i would like to have.

Anyone know of any possibility of getting the rest of the research Unix
code released in the same way the v7 and prior code is?

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Sven Mascheck]

Geoff Collyer wrote:

>> http://www.collyer.net/~geoff/v7sh.tar

Now this is great news.  (I for myself gave up somewhere at the
directory-reading code due to lack of time and experience.)

> I should perhaps clarify that this is a V7 sh, from Steve Bourne,
> not a clone [...]

('79) ...whereas its direct successors (usually only available on
commercial dialects) are usually still called "traditional" Bourne
shells; Steve Bourne had worked on this shell until SVR2 ('84).

You can see a history about added features, i.e., the development
of the traditional Bourne shell (and its various vendor variants)
until SVR4.2 ('92) on <http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/bourne/>.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Steve Kilbane]

Doug wrote:

> Actually I still use the BRL version of the Bourne Shell, [...]
> which is hard to live without once one has gotten used to
> it.

*Anything's* hard to live without once one has gotten sufficiently
used to it.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Boyd Roberts wrote:
> putting v8-ism's into the sysVr2 shell was trivial.

Actually I still use the BRL version of the Bourne Shell,
which was adaptable via compile-time parameters to fit any
known Unix environment (including Research), and optionally
supported pathname completion, EMACS-like command-line
editing, job control, scrollable/searchable history, etc.
which is hard to live without once one has gotten used to
it.  I haven't tried porting it to the native Plan 9
environment.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Boyd Roberts]

putting v8-ism's into the sysVr2 shell was trivial.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Richard Miller]

>  the new, wacky SCO,

It's all very confusing.  As far as I can tell, the new wacky SCO is
actually Caldera, which changed its name to SCO when it bought the
rights to Unix from the original SCO, which is now called Tarantella Inc.

So it's not a question of SCO changing its nature, but a case of
(legal) identity theft.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Geoff Collyer]

If the licensing can be worked out, I'm pretty sure I can put my hands
on the V9 shell that I worked over, including the re-worked memory
management.

For that matter, I could probably lay hands on Dave Kapilow's
V9-on-the-Sun3 tape for TUHS if licensing were solved.

Re: [9fans] POSIXy V7 sh

[Dennis Ritchie]

 > Rob Pike <rob@mightycheese.com> writes:
 >> it's the v8 shell that i would like to have.

 > Anyone know of any possibility of getting the rest of the research Unix
 > code released in the same way the v7 and prior code is?

 >	- Dan C.

Until the SCO suit I was about ready to quietly slip
the V8 distribution into the TUHS archive under
the kinder-gentler SCO's license.  So far TUHS
hasn't been hassled by the new, wacky SCO,
and I'm hesitant to attract their attention to TUHS.

If Rob or someone else wants the V8 or later shell,
I'd be glad to send it.

	Dennis