UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I'm confused (oh, yes). I'm running Linux at work. When I type 'echo $SHELL' I am told that I'm running tcsh. In /bin I note that both tcsh and bash are listed.

Question 1: Can I swap to run bash rather than tcsh and, if so, how will this affect my system? Is there any advantage to this? How do I swap? (Cheeky! Four questions in one!)

Question 2: If I want to develop my scripting skills for use on this system, does it make sense for me to do a bash scripting course?

Thanks,

Pete.

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide will help you

I use bash which is an extended ksh apparently.

to change just use

chsh -s /bin/bash {username}


run `man chsh` to get more info

Thanks for the responses, chaps - very helpful. Can anyone tell me if non-bash scripts would be cause not to operate if I switched to using a bash shell?

Every shell has there own features, capabilities and usefulness. So it is possible if you have script created in tcsh may not work in bash.

- nilesh

The current shell that you log into doesn't really matter as long as you set the first line in your script to the appropriate shell designated in the first line of your script #!/usr/bin/xxx where xxx is csh, ksh, etc. So you can log into the system using the bash shell and run a ksh shell script by calling the ksh shell in your script.


BTW, the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide mentioned earlier is an excellent resource for learning shell scripting.

Hope that helps...

--Robert

Great stuff. Thanks for the advice - one and all.