7 Aug
2018
7 Aug
'18
7:10 a.m.
Off topic to one side:
I was told, but cannot recall by whom, that the csh decision to use %
when the bourne shell had $ was to make it clear which syntax was
expected by the user. tcsh inherited from csh. Bash/Zsh/Ash/Ksh
inherited from sh.
Obviously that is outside the strict terms of the question and lies in
hands, not this lists main focus.
-G
On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 7:33 AM, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6 August 2018 at 17:16, <ron(a)ronnatalie.com>
wrote:
The early shells (Thompson, Mashey) used "% " for regular user (and # for
root). The Thompson shell didn't have a setable prompt.
The Bourne shell (V7) had setable PS1 (start of command) and PS2
(continuation prompts) and set the to "$ " and "> " respectively.
Again #
was used for root
Okay, but why did Bourne switch from "%" to "$"? Was it to inform
the user
that they were using the new shell as opposed to the old one, or was there
some other reasoning behind the switch?
-Henry