Talk:Bash (Unix shell)

Possible original research

This section appears to be almost completely original research. Its claims are not expressed anywhere in the sources cited, rather, the citations all link to basic information about Bash or dictionary definitions of respective words.

As an example, the section states that "With that pun, it would seem, is added an allusion: possibly to the Hindu or Buddhist idea of reincarnation; possibly to the Christian idiom known as 'being born again;' or quite possibly just to the more abstract idea of renewal." There is no source that makes that claim, and I am left to assume that this is an editor's own interpretation. As such, I am marking it as original research. Abitowlish (talk) 01:53, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

macOS is Unix, and bash is not Unix-like

I am not a Wikipedia writer, I just want to say that I really do not like the following sentence since it might be misleading: "While bash is considered Unix-like,[14] it's also available on macOS, Windows, BeOS,[15][16] and Haiku.[17]".

The cited FAQ in [14] states that "Bash is a Unix command interpreter", not something like "Unix-like". Also, how should only a terminal resemble a whole UNIX OS?

Also, macOS is the only real Unix (that is also certified to be one), so why should it be unusual for bash running on macOS?

I think I would be more pleased with something like: "While bash was developed with UNIX and UNIX-like operation systems in mind like GNU/Linux or macOS, it is also available on Windows, BeOS, and Haiku." 176.3.11.152 (talk) 21:18, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I am glad that there is still someone who tries to explain things to wikipedia that obviously only very few of the wikipedia upper class can or want to understand. Could this have something to do with who donates a lot of money to wikipedia? 91.248.156.3 (talk) 09:40, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, that makes a bucketful of unuseful & biased assumptions. Perhaps the editor 91.248.156.3 can identify who this wikipedia upper class is. Does it include Koavf who has worked as a pizza delivery guy, a bookstore clerk, a computer lab assistant, and a research assistant? I, myself, who am among the top 1100 editors by edits, have recently retired & get a small pension & Social security. I think that you would be hard pressed to find anyone who is supported financially to do this volunteer work. I suggest that 91.248.156.3 read the policy on original research to know the difference between making stuff up & backing up what one has to write with verification from reliable sources. Perhaps it would be better if the editor at 91.248.156.3 actually became a contributor & learned what it takes to build an encyclopedia rather than taking potshots. Peaceray (talk) 18:01, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

 Done I altered the language slightly, so it now reads While bash was developed for UNIX and UNIX-like operation systems such as GNU/Linux, it's also available on Windows, BeOS, and Haiku. Peaceray (talk) 17:36, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello, 176.3.11.152 here. I want to thank you for reading and valuing my thoughts.

I don't want to say much about 91.248.156.3 as this is the wrong place, I just want to say thank you for your work, you do a great job that many don't appreciate. 176.6.49.66 (talk) 09:05, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Single maintainer for over 30 years

CC @Blush30720: @Neko-chan:
I think it's worth to mention the fact that only one person maintained bash for over 30 years (as of 2025). All along. Not breaking compatibility even once. Just like in that Xkcd 2347 meme. We have at least two sources on that. Any objections? AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 19:53, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

@Alexander Davronov I'm not sure why I'm tapped in on this, but if you have good sources, go for it ~ฅ(ↀωↀ=)neko-chan^nyan 01:28, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

"Not breaking compatibility even once" is a demonstrated falsehood. I've used Bash as my primary shell and have on many occasions had to make changes to my scripts to accommodate changes to Bash; often this only required minor tweaks, but at least twice it has required significant reworking. For example, non-local flow control using break and continue was broken without warning in Bash 4.3. Although the previous behaviour can be reinstated using shopt -s compat42, that disables all subsequent improvements as well, so numerous scripts required significant re-working to get around the loss of this functionality.

There is even a breaking change expected in the upcoming 5.3 release, and the maintainer is aware of this: it introduces a mandatory warning for usage of `printf` that has hitherto worked silently, with no option to suppress this warning. This spurious output will cause breakage in a small proportion of CI/CD chains and false alarms in some system monitoring tools. Yet the maintainer asserts that it won´t cause enough damage to existing systems to justify any ameliorative adjustment; I'm a "lone wolf" and should be ignored.

I'm way beyond disappointed. Martin Kealey (talk) 07:13, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for reaching and pointing that out. I was totally wrong on that. Turns out there is a whole range of options to invoke compatibilty modes... Including --posix. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 07:58, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Misleading timeline points

Some anachronisms:

• 1971 - Ken Thompson developed the first shell for UNIX called the 'V6 shell' - except that “v6 shell” was simply shorthand for whatever version of the shell was shipped as part of UNIX v6, which itself wasn't shipped until 5 years later. This misattribution extends to claims of features that did not exist in 1971, such as pipelines.
  The reference to osh still being distributed is clearly out of place; it should probably sit against the 1977 release of the Bourne Shell.
• 1977 - ASCII published by NIST - technically true, but it had been published by ANSI in 1968. (By 1977 ASCII had already been the dominant encoding for several years, so it's not clear why it's mentioned here at all.)
• 1984 - IEEE POSIX work started in 1984 - except it wasn't driven by IEEE until 1986, and wasn't called POSIX until 1988.

Also, much of this list really belongs under UNIX rather than Bash. Martin Kealey (talk) 23:16, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

I suggest we move statements on ASCII to the article about ASCII.
Regarding POSIX: I think we should keep this statement cause it specifies "work" on standard, not standard itself which was published in 1988. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 09:21, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

yes, there's nearly no history of bash itself in most of these entries. Removing them. MüllerMarcus (talk) 08:40, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Random grab-bag

I find the overall quality of this article disappointing. It feels like a random grab-bag of stuff without a structural focus on how Bash (a) implements a POSIX shell, and (b) offers extensions.

The ordering of the details makes little sense, mixing POSIX features and extensions together.

Some writing indicate poor understanding of the shell itself, mixing terminology, conflating "terminal" and "shell" as if they were the same thing. Some citations don't actually say what the text does. (For example, it says that "trap" was a new feature in version 2; it wasn't, it was there in version 1.)

The "grab bag" feel of this whole article makes me think that it should be substantially cut down, referencing other (more reliable) sources for actual timelines and feature descriptions. All explanations of POSIX features should be cut out and moved to an article about the POSIX shell. Martin Kealey (talk) 05:01, 13 June 2025 (UTC)