# Using tcsh - C shell - what's the difference?



## dlarmour (Nov 16, 2003)

Hi

What is the difference between the C shells and the bourne shells?

If I wanted to change from tcsh to bash for instance, how do I do this and is there any affect?  Can I do this and still run all the software the same or does that change too? Do the variables and their values change, such as PATH?

Thanx for the insight.

David


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## davidbrit2 (Nov 17, 2003)

The biggest difference is in the scripting language. Some of the shell variables might be a bit different, too, but the major ones are mostly the same. Setting them has slightly different syntax, though. Other than that, usage is essentially the same, except for a few minor details. For instance, tab completion works a little differently. It's really not worth the trouble to switch to Bash full time unless you plan to do short scripts at the command line. You'll just have to spend a lot of time rewriting your initialization scripts, and getting the behavior back to how you like it. Out of the box, I find tcsh most usable for interactive use.


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## ericl (Nov 18, 2003)

David, there are many thick books on this subject - the man pages on your Mac do a pretty good job.

If you were to open a terminal window, & were using the default tcsh, you couls enter:

#bash<CR>

and be in the bash shell.  To the best of my knowledge, none of the environment stuff set by tcsh would be valid anymore.

I am an Instructor for UNIX storage software & once had a kernel programmer as a student who made his system unaccessable by ignoring my cautions to be careful about changing his shell stuff, so be careful


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## Ripcord (Nov 18, 2003)

Also, probably the cleanest way to change your shell is via NetInfo Manager.

I like Bash, possibly because I'm a bit more used to it from Linux (it's the default in every distribution I've used recently).  I think it's a good thing that Apple made it the default in Panther.


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