[plug] zsh vs bash

[Mike Holland]

On Sat, 10 Feb 2001, Peter Wright wrote:

> bash man page difficult to find things on as well - the zsh man
> page(s) are, I think, somewhat better. (note that this is just a

Good point! People often forget how important the documentation quality
is, in choosing between software alternatives.

> > Other features I might miss are RPROMPT, chpwd(), PRINT_EXIT_VALUE,
> > REPORTTIME .

> The others I don't know, I'll look them up though if you think they're
> worth knowing about.

You can define a 'chpwd()' which is called every time the PWD
(directory) changes. Commonly used to put the directory name in the
xterm (or real terminal) title bar.

  'PRINT_EXIT_VALUE' is very nice. It lets you know when a command
returns a non-zero exit status. Most shells seem to ignore such errors,
unless explicitly tested in a script.

> Sun Keyboard Hack                    N    N    N    N    N    Y    N    N

:-) This was what originally hooked me on zsh. The sun keyboard has a
small 'enter' key, and its easy to clip the backquote accidentally.

> Spelling Correction                  N    N    N    N    Y    Y    N    N

Does bash still lack such a cool feature?

   % ls /etcc
   zsh: correct '/etcc' to '/etc' [nyae]?

> Hope that the above load of waffle contained something interesting to someone,
> somewhere. :)

Was interesting to me, thanks, but I guess thats preaching to the choir :)


-- 
Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
                          --==--
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course,
you are an exceptionally good liar.  -- Jerome K. Jerome