*BSD News Article 63879


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From: devet@adv.IAEhv.nl (Arjan de Vet)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Is replacing /bin/sh with bash recommended?
Date: 20 Mar 1996 20:42:30 +0100
Organization: Internet Access Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Lines: 25
Message-ID: <4ipn36$3aq@adv.IAEhv.nl>
References: <4ih5qb$lae@blackice.winternet.com> <4ik5p6$qm6@helena.mt.net> <DoJrqo.6F9@twwells.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: adv.iaehv.nl

In article <DoJrqo.6F9@twwells.com>, T. William Wells <bill@twwells.com> wrote:

>It's also worth noting *why* I switched to bash: because the !@#$
>shell that comes with the system had problems, "big ones", in
>dealing with many shell scripts....

I experienced the same in the past, the current version seems better.

>There is only one reason to not use bash instead of the standard
>shell and that's that bash is about 40% bigger. Still, there's no
>way I'd use the existing shell; in a word, it sucks, it always has
>sucked, and probably will never get any better -- because the
>*reason* for using it instead of bash is that it's smaller. Add

Smaller? When I compile bash with config.h.mini, statically linked and
stripped, and compare it with the statically linked and stripped /bin/sh I
get (on 2.0.5):

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  290816 Mar 20 20:35 bash
-r-xr-xr-x  1 bin   bin    299008 Jun 10  1995 sh

>the stuff to make it as useful as bash and it'll be as big as
>bash... at which point, you might just as well use bash.

Arjan