Comments on: KornShell’s Bad Rap

By: Bill Anderson

Bill Anderson — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:29:32 +0000

Besides the course I wrote on KornShell, the Korn Shell book is a great place to start.

By: Clark Dunson

Clark Dunson — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:44:39 +0000

Hmm. Ubuntu seems to offer ksh93. I am a pretty solid bash script programmer who is curious about KornShell. Anyone know any leads on finding a tutorial, etc. scoped for script programmers that will allow one some pretty good insights into what KSH is all about after say, a few hours of study? THANKS!!

By: Bill Anderson

Bill Anderson — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:36:26 +0000

I disagree. Had AT&T Research Labs not kept ksh93 as part of AST, the status of ksh today might be totally different. By the time ksh was released as open source, Bash had already established its dominant role. Alas, the UNIX distributions are still using ksh88.

By: Manish Jain

Manish Jain — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:24:54 +0000

The reason for Korn shell’s unpopularity lies not in history, but in the present where it is far inferior in terms of user-friendliness and features as an interactive shell. Citing POSIX compliance for ksh’s bad reputation is just creating an excuse for – what more properly are – its fundamental weaknesses. If Bash could have become a pleasure to work with by the late 90′s, Korn shell could have at least tried being such a pain even in 2010.

By: Bill Anderson

Bill Anderson — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:51:45 +0000

I only used pdksh a few times. I found that it was a good emulation of ksh88, as long as you didn’t take it to the extremes. One of its downfalls was the failure to implement the POSIX standard as did ksh93 and bash. With few exceptions, the UNIX releases never moved beyond ksh88, even after ksh93 moved into the public domain. The years it spent trapped in the ast package took its toll on the popularity of ksh93.

By: bill duncan

bill duncan — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:53:28 +0000

Good piece of history bringing some memories back. While not in the same bloodline, a mention of the pdksh might have been thrown in as well (a little bit of Canadiana if I recall). It never became as popular as bash, but did an admirable job of emulating the real McCoy..

Thanks!