Why zsh?

Why zsh?

[Arthur Alinovi]

I'll start by saying up front that I am just a unix beginner who has
started experimenting with zsh.

So far, I'm very impressed by what I see. However, a friend of mine (who
is a bit of a unix wizard) uses tcsh and is curious as to what zsh can
do that tcsh couldn't do if he wrote a 500 line .cshrc file (which is
what a lot of the .zshrc files I've found on the web seem to be). I
mean, some of these files go on for pages and pages.

If someone who really knows this stuff could give me a few

"zsh is better that tcsh, because..."

I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks

Re: Why zsh?

[Bart Schaefer]

On Aug 31,  1:43am, Arthur Alinovi wrote:
} 
} So far, I'm very impressed by what I see. However, a friend of mine
} (who is a bit of a unix wizard) uses tcsh and is curious as to what
} zsh can do that tcsh couldn't do if he wrote a 500 line .cshrc file

* Execute standard /bin/sh scripts.

* Handle ANY signal, not just INT and HUP.

* Redirect stderr without redirecting stdout as well.

* Parse real semantic control structures (loops, functions, etc.) rather
  than syntactic sugar that sort of looks like a control structure. [%]

And those are just the features common to any Bourne-like shell, such as
bash or ksh as well as zsh.  How about:

* Do real multi-line editing of arbitrary text (not just command lines).

* Do floating point arithmetic.  (Ok, so you need zsh 4.x for that one.)

* Save that 500 line startup file in byte-compiled form so it doesn't
  need to be parsed again the next time.  (Yeah, that's 4.x as well.)

I could go on, but there's no way to explain things like multios and
process substitutions in two lines of text, and you should have the idea
by now.

> "zsh is better that tcsh, because..."

... no one has yet had any reason to write a document entitled "Zsh
Programming Considered Harmful."

	http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/

----------
[%] I quote from <http://www.tcsh.org/tcsh.html/Control_flow.html>:

    "If the shell's input is not seekable, the shell buffers up input
     whenever a loop is being read and performs seeks in this internal
     buffer to accomplish the rereading implied by the loop."

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net   

Re: Why zsh?

[William H. Magill]

On Saturday, August 31, 2002, at 01:43  AM, Arthur Alinovi wrote:
> "zsh is better that tcsh, because..."

zsh supports ksh which is the POSIX standard shell.



T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org

Re: Why zsh?

[Joshua Symons]

also good reading, posted this link (copy of original) because faqs.org
is down.
http://www.uni-giessen.de/faq/archiv/unix-faq.shell.shell-differences/msg00000.html

- Josh -

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@brasslantern.com>
Date: Saturday, August 31, 2002 2:06 am
Subject: Re: Why zsh?

> On Aug 31,  1:43am, Arthur Alinovi wrote:
> } 
> } So far, I'm very impressed by what I see. However, a friend of mine
> } (who is a bit of a unix wizard) uses tcsh and is curious as to what
> } zsh can do that tcsh couldn't do if he wrote a 500 line .cshrc file
> 
> * Execute standard /bin/sh scripts.
> 
> * Handle ANY signal, not just INT and HUP.
> 
> * Redirect stderr without redirecting stdout as well.
> 
> * Parse real semantic control structures (loops, functions, etc.) 
> rather  than syntactic sugar that sort of looks like a control 
> structure. [%]
> 
> And those are just the features common to any Bourne-like shell, 
> such as
> bash or ksh as well as zsh.  How about:
> 
> * Do real multi-line editing of arbitrary text (not just command 
> lines).
> * Do floating point arithmetic.  (Ok, so you need zsh 4.x for that 
> one.)
> * Save that 500 line startup file in byte-compiled form so it doesn't
>  need to be parsed again the next time.  (Yeah, that's 4.x as well.)
> 
> I could go on, but there's no way to explain things like multios and
> process substitutions in two lines of text, and you should have the 
> ideaby now.
> 
> > "zsh is better that tcsh, because..."
> 
> ... no one has yet had any reason to write a document entitled "Zsh
> Programming Considered Harmful."
> 
>    http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/
> 
> ----------
> [%] I quote from <:" 
> target="l">http://www.tcsh.org/tcsh.html/Control_flow.html>:
>    "If the shell's input is not seekable, the shell buffers up input
>     whenever a loop is being read and performs seeks in this internal
>     buffer to accomplish the rereading implied by the loop."
> 
> -- 
> Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern 
> Enterpriseshttp://www.well.com/user/barts              
> http://www.brasslantern.com
> Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: 
> http://phperl.sourceforge.net   
>