[H-GEN] Useful not so obvious tips

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004, Russell Stuart wrote:

> In some ways the old days were really better:
>
>   v7-unix$  man sh | wc -w      =   3087
>   rh8$      man ash | wc -w     =   8048
>   rh8$      man bash | wc -w    =  33928
>   rh8$      man zshall | wc -w  = 113824
>
> I like bash, but it ain't an order of magnitude better than
> V7 sh.  I wonder what gains there are is worth the order of
> magnitude increase in learning time?

But the learning time is not an order of magnitude great - not to become
useful anyway.  If it takes a person time t to become proficient in sh
then the same person came become proficient in bash in time t also (in so
far as the person treats bash as sh).  Now the person can go on to spend
additional time to gain additional skills in bash but they they are
already being as proficient as they would have been had they only learnt
sh.  In addition the sh user can come across to bash with little trouble
and keep on learning.

As I noted recently in another thread - I've been using Unix since 1992
and I'm still leaning new stuff about shells but that hasn't stopped me
from being useful up to this point.  I like the fact that I can continue
to learn and gain new skills from a tool I have been using for so long.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073, Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net, http://www.opentrend.net
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