what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

[David Combs]

I tried it once, a few years ago, and found it difficult,
maybe even unpleasant, to use.  Also never learned how
to do things I was used to do with tcsh.

And why better (for programming) than bourne?

What I do depends on what you guys say.


THANKS

David

Re: what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

[Chris McMahan]

The advantage of eshell is in it's automatic inclusion with emacs, and
its portability across platforms. 

You also have the advantage of access to emacs functions and lisp
programming.

I wouldn't go so far as to say one is better than the other. Just use
the one that's appropriate for a given situation.

- Chris

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> I tried it once, a few years ago, and found it difficult,
> maybe even unpleasant, to use.  Also never learned how
> to do things I was used to do with tcsh.
>
> And why better (for programming) than bourne?
>
> What I do depends on what you guys say.
>
>
> THANKS
>
> David
>
>

-- 
     (.   .)
  =ooO=(_)=Ooo=====================================
  Chris McMahan | first_initiallastname@one.dot.net
  =================================================

Re: what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

[Joel J. Adamson]

Although this sounds like bait, I'll try to help you.

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> I tried it once, a few years ago, and found it difficult,
> maybe even unpleasant, to use.  Also never learned how
> to do things I was used to do with tcsh.

Eshell is for interactive use in Emacs.  It's more portable than say
bash, if you don't want to install Cygwin.

> And why better (for programming) than bourne?

It's not.  Scripting in Eshell doesn't make any sense.  For that you'd
simply use Lisp.

Eshell, IMO, is nice because you can use familiar Emacs commands as
shell commands, however, I get a lot more mileage out of just using
dired and Emacs in command mode (as an editor) than in Eshell.  Eshell
also mixes up parentheses and brackets, which I find slightly confusing.

Joel
-- 
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Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston, MA  02114
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Re: what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

[Xavier Maillard]

   Although this sounds like bait, I'll try to help you.

   dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

   > I tried it once, a few years ago, and found it difficult,
   > maybe even unpleasant, to use.  Also never learned how
   > to do things I was used to do with tcsh.

   Eshell is for interactive use in Emacs.  It's more portable than say
   bash, if you don't want to install Cygwin.

   > And why better (for programming) than bourne?

   It's not.  Scripting in Eshell doesn't make any sense.  For that you'd
   simply use Lisp.

   Eshell, IMO, is nice because you can use familiar Emacs commands as
   shell commands, however, I get a lot more mileage out of just using
   dired and Emacs in command mode (as an editor) than in Eshell.  Eshell
   also mixes up parentheses and brackets, which I find slightly confusing.

I also tried several times to use eshell but I really prefer
eev-mode + M-x shell.

I highly recommend anybody to try eev-mode to see what it can do.

	Xavier
-- 
http://www.gnu.org
http://www.april.org
http://www.lolica.org

Re: what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

[Ted Zlatanov]

On 3 Apr 2008 21:44:37 -0400 dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) wrote: 

DC> I tried it once, a few years ago, and found it difficult,
DC> maybe even unpleasant, to use.  Also never learned how
DC> to do things I was used to do with tcsh.

DC> And why better (for programming) than bourne?

Stick with tcsh if it's what you like.

Look at the eshell manual, that's the best way to learn what it can do.

DC> What I do depends on what you guys say.

Send us all your money! :)

Ted

Re: what's much better in eshell than eg tcsh?

[Tim X]

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> I tried it once, a few years ago, and found it difficult,
> maybe even unpleasant, to use.  Also never learned how
> to do things I was used to do with tcsh.
>
> And why better (for programming) than bourne?
>
> What I do depends on what you guys say.
>

For shell programming, use /bin/sh if you want portability or /bin/bash
if you want higher level functionality in bash and don't care as much
about portability. 

Avoid csh/tcsh for programming as they don't have some problems with
things like redirection and other 'inconsistencies' in some areas
(though these are mainly fairly advanced scripting techniques that many
won't encounter in basic scripting). Tcsh/csh used to be great for
interactive shells (well they still are), but most if not all the
advantages they offer are now also found in shells like bash. 

eshell is a good little interactive shell within emacs that is very
handy whenyou need to pke around in the filesystem.  However, it has
limitations with respect to redirection and handling ncurses etc, so be
careful using su/sudo or running scripts that use recirection and I
don't think its good at job control e.g. background/foreground jobs etc.

Tim


-- 
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