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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 12:52:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Peter A. Castro" <doctor AT fruitbat DOT org>
To: Nicholas Wourms <nwourms AT yahoo DOT com>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Soliciting profiles for next Zsh release
In-Reply-To: <20020827200124.74495.qmail@web21006.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0208281223460.10545-100000@gremlin.fruitbat.org>
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Nicholas Wourms wrote:

> --- "Peter A. Castro" <doctor AT fruitbat DOT org> wrote:
> [SNIP]
> > some pre-canned startup profiles (and skeletons) to make zsh the best
> > shell ever on Cygwin!  I might even through in a desktop icon.  But
> [SNIP]
> 
> I am truly intersted in switching.  What are the pros and cons when
> switching from bash?  What features might qualify it as the best
> shell for Cygwin?  I'm sure there are others on the list who may be
> wondering the same things.

I have to say that ones choice of shell is somewhat personal, kinda like
a laptop or camera or the type of soft drink you prefer.  It's not so
much what the shell can do as what *you* can do with it.  I started out,
like most people, with the standard Bourne Shell and acquired a taste for
C-Shell and it's history mechanism.  Later I learned Korn Shell, but I
missed the history mechanism of C-Shell.  Z Shell came into my life at
version 2.0 and it had some of the features of all three shells, as well
as some sed & awk features.  I really like the command line editing and
it's filename/command completion facility.  I do a lot of adhoc shell
script coding/prototyping, and being able to type in a code fragment,
test it, retrieve it with the up-arrow key and inline edit it and run
again is something I really value.  It's been my shell of choice ever
since.  The other shells didn't let me do editing this with as much ease.
Some people would advocate Emacs for this kind of thing, using the
interactive shell-mode but I'm way to impatient to wait for Emacs to load
to use it.  Don't get me wrong, I like Emacs, but since it's not one some
of the platforms, and vi/vim is, I don't rely on it like I do Zsh.  While
Emacs isn't on all the platforms I work on (it only recent came to
Cygwin) and I can easily build Zsh on just about any platforms.  Building
Emacs, by contrast, is often a project in itself.  I don't know that I
can adequately convey my reasons for using Z Shell.  Command line editing
is just one of it's great features.  The best thing I can suggest is
install the package and read the info files. 

> Cheers,
> Nicholas

-- 
Peter A. Castro <doctor AT fruitbat DOT org> or <Peter DOT Castro AT oracle DOT com>
	"Cats are just autistic Dogs" -- Dr. Tony Attwood


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