Thomas Paulsen: bash is clearly more advanced. ksh is retro computing. ==== Shell wars are, in the end, no more interesting than editor wars. I use bash on Linux systems because it's the least-poorly supported of the Bourne-family shells, besides which bash is there by default. Ksh isn't. I use ksh on OpenBSD systems because it's the least-poorly supported of the Bourne-family shells, besides which kh is there by default. Bash isn't. I don't actually care for most of the extra crap in either of those shells. I don't want my shell to do line editing or auto-completion, and I find the csh-derived history mechanisms more annoying than useful so I turn them off too. To my mind, the Research 10/e sh had it about right, including the simple way functions were exported and the whatis built-in that told you whether something was a variable or a shell function or an external executable, and printed the first two in forms easily edited on the screen and re-used. Terminal programs that don't let you easily edit input or output from the screen and re-send it, and programs that abet them by spouting gratuitous ANSI control sequences: now THAT's what I call retro-computing. Probably further discussion of any of this belongs in COFF. Norman Wilson Toronto ON