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One minor quibble...
Authored by: CarlRJ on Sep 26, '04 02:32:21PM

... which likely no-one will ever read.

Uh, okay, it's a rant, I'll just call it what it is...

<rant>

Apple DID NOT REPLACE tcsh with bash.

Mac OS X is Unix (okay, "Unix-like", we'll sidestep licensing issues). Unix has always had the notion that users may choose their preferred command shell. It's one of the bits of information about users that's been recorded in /etc/passwd since the dawn of time().

Apple did NOT install bash, remove tcsh, rewrite all the scripts in their system, and decree that tcsh never existed and that bash has always been the One True Shell. But you might get this impression from the way that some users talk of the Great Change.

Apple changed the default for the prompt about which shell to assign to newly created users. The way that people infer some Significant Change from this ("therefore we must all change..."), is right up there with the practice of reading tea leaves to intuit what the Gods want us mortals to do.

</rant>

Thank you for letting me get that out of my system.

Oh, and robg should register macosxpowerhound.com asap, and point it at macosxhints.com.



[ Reply to This | # ]
One minor quibble...
Authored by: kirkmc on Sep 26, '04 02:57:24PM

You could say that Apple "replaced" the default shell assignment; which is exactly what they did. The problem occurs for users who do a clean install, and open Terminal only to find a $ instead of a %, and who then do things that don't work.

You're right, but the details aren't important.

Re the domain name... Have you gone to powerhounds.com? :-)

Kirk

---
Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more



[ Reply to This | # ]
One minor quibble...
Authored by: robg on Sep 26, '04 04:42:40PM

Kirk has the description right of what I was trying to convey :). I completely agree that Apple made no such fundamental switch in OS X. But they did flip a simple switch which basically made affected many of the Unix hints on the site (and in the book).

As you point out, what made it even more interesting is that existing users shells were left alone. While this is as it should be, it certainly led to some interesting tech support discussions, at least for me (as I was still using tcsh).

And good idea on macosxpowerhound; it's now registered and should point here shortly :).

regards;
-rob.



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