Talk:KornShell

Standards compliance

 * >>>Ksh aim to respect the Shell Language Standard (POSIX 1003.2 "Shell and Utilities Language Committee").<<<

This sentence makes no sense. Shouldn't this be something like:


 * "Ksh's aim is to replace the Shell Language ..."

I am just commenting on the wording. I don't know the specifics of KSH's goals.


 * I think think wording in the article is correct. They want to be compatible with the standard POSIX shell, not replace it. --Merphant 05:51, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Vendors shipping ksh93
"(as of 2005 only Solaris ships ksh88, all other Unix vendors migrated to ksh93 and even Linux distributions started shipping ksh93)"

is not entirely accurate: IBM still ships AIX with a modified ksh88 as /bin/ksh but has started shipping /bin/ksh93 for the same (starting at least @ version 5.2).

--Sonicbphuct 21:11, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually this comment is not correct: IBM France confirmed that AIX ships with ksh93 as default - ksh88 is available as a compatibility package

The original comment isn't correct HP-UX from 10.20 (at least) onwards shipped with ksh88, dtksh (derivative of ksh93) and the default shell which was POSIX-sh - a derived ksh88, to fit with the POSIX standard; there's some minor differences (e.g. you can have several string manipulations in serial on a variable: ${a%.sh##*/} but it is generally backwardly compatible.

I just learned the hard way that my client's AIX environment does not use ksh93 by default, but only when invoked with /usr/bin/ksh93. See http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.baseadmn/doc/baseadmndita/korn_posix_cmds.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.240.125.226 (talk) 17:10, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Book cover
The book cover is amusing (being signed by the band), but it's not terribly helpful here. Can anyone think of a reason that an article on the Korn shell NEEDS more than just an image of the logo? -Harmil 15:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I concur. If I don't see any objections (other than it's humourous) here in the next couple of days I will remove it. Gh5046 20:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I personally think the book cover is hilarious! I find it humorous enough to jusify its place on this page. After all, it is illustrating the manual cover, isn't it? :) -Jellocube27 21:20, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it adds confusion. There's really no relation between the shell and the band. The shell predates the band by many years. And Wikipedia is not a comic book, there's no need to be amusing. It's meant to be informative. --82.141.48.198 18:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Why would someone destroy a perfectly good book? --Peepokeet 23:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

what about mksh?
Maybe it should be mentioned as well. 84.191.226.162 (talk) 02:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure, go for it. Gh5046 (talk) 02:51, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I corrected the license terms. mksh, according to mirbsd.org, does not appear to use MirOS's own license, but rather the Modified BSD License and the ISC License. --Evice (talk) 07:26, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

why did you remove...
Why did you remove the external link to the most widely refererenced korn shell script repository on the internet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.171.225.24 (talk) 21:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * To those still interested in the answer: because such a link is irrelevant. A clever mind can easily get why and wouldn′t ask the question in the first place. Others, you will content yourselves with the following hint: we don′t put links to software repositories in the “Software” article, we don′t put links to Git/SVN repositories in the “Source code” article, and so on. I hope you manage to grasp the recurring idea in all these instances. 213.131.238.28 (talk) 14:29, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

The name must be changed
The name of a product is exactly how the manufacturer of that product spells it, up to the smallest quirk like a space or capital. The name of the product in question, i.e. ksh and ksh93 standard UNIX programs, is KornShell. We should rename the article likewise. The current name of this article (“Korn shell”) is mangled: putting a space between “Korn” and “Shell” and de-capitalizing the latter is someone′s unjustified gag. I will create an account and rename the article myself. 213.131.238.28 (talk) 14:44, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It's not unjustified. From WP:COMMONNAME, "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources."  Bolsky and Korn referred to it as the "KornShell" in "The KornShell Command and Programming Language" (1989).  But Kochan and Wood called it the "Korn shell" in "UNIX Shell Programming" (1985), as did Rosenblatt in "Learning the Korn Shell" (1993).  "Korn shell" is also far more common on web, with about 751,000 results for "Korn shell" compared to just 399,000 for "KornShell".  Similarly, searches at Amazon.com for "Korn shell" turn up 56 results compared to just 20 for KornShell.  I think the change to "KornShell" should be reverted.  Msnicki (talk) 03:25, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a similar case of UNIX vs. Unix, because mksh is officially the MirBSD Korn Shell, with a space. --Evice (talk) 07:30, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Korn shell or KornShell?
What should it be, Korn shell or KornShell? The article uses both. --Mortense (talk) 23:45, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

KornShell & POSIX, wording
In the Design section, the article states that "KornShell complies with POSIX.2"

thus giving the impression that the KornShell was written to be POSIX-compliant, which is misleading as it was actually written way earlier than the standard and that "The functionality of the original KornShell, ksh88, was used as a basis for the standard POSIX.2"

- History section

Tinm (talk) 19:05, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

ksh93v
Given this:

ksh93v-64 --version version        sh (AT&T Research) 93v- 2014-12-24

and the fact that there is close to no activity since David started to work for Google, I tend call ksh93v- very stable. Schily (talk) 13:11, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Has it anything official? Debian/sid still has 93u. Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 15:01, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It is the latest version that could be loaded from the AT&T server before it stopped working. I could not find it in the GITlab repo, but someone told me that it is contained in a branch that needs to be specified explicitly. Schily (talk) 16:08, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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