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Sep 21, 2023 at 21:04 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 4.0
HTTPS update broke one of the links, so reverted it to HTTP; edit dropped a digit in one of the file sizes; changed to kiB units from kB
Sep 21, 2023 at 20:43 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 4.0
Updated macOS Bash claim to track change to zsh; swapped places with a few footnotes to clarify the main answer; checked and updated all links; and modernized Markdown to placate SE's new parser
Nov 10, 2022 at 18:14 comment added Warren Young Those are all entirely outside the hierarchy. Fish isn't POSIX-like, Wish is based on Tcl, and ipython is of course based on Python. The best I could do it put them as boxes outside, as I currently do with rc. The only reason rc gets a mention while those don't is that it was the shell in a research AT&T project from the series of operating systems that birthed all this. The others are wholly outside that line of evolution. I mean, we have frakking PowerShell on Linux these days. It'd make just as much sense to put it on the chart as these others. Also, see point #9 above.
Nov 10, 2022 at 17:45 comment added Jay M fish & wish to name but two. Also ipython is now a valid unix shell
Nov 10, 2022 at 16:07 comment added Warren Young @JayM: While I have no doubt I could elaborate the tree ad infinitum, I'm not aware of a single recent change on the same level of importance as those shown already. What do you think is missing, and why is it essential that it be included?
Nov 10, 2022 at 15:46 comment added Jay M Great article. I've tried to find some place with a better history and not come up with much. It would be nice to see a more up to date ancestry tree though. There is quite a lot missing.
Apr 7, 2020 at 12:00 history edited schily CC BY-SA 4.0
osh has been renamed to obosh in August 2018
Feb 5, 2018 at 19:11 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
updated Korn shell material
Feb 5, 2018 at 10:00 comment added Stéphane Chazelas May be worth noting that pdksh itself is based on the Forsyth shell. Mostly forgotten today but does have some historical significance in the pdksh heritage but also as it was the shell of some versions of minix and had been ported to msdos.
Sep 10, 2017 at 6:49 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
Added historical evidence that BusyBox ash derives from Debian's ash package, and updated the diagram to drop "BusyBox ash" historically from `dash` rather than the original `ash`; also changed "BusyBox sh" in the diagram to "BusyBox ash" to distinguish it from "BusyBox hush"
Jun 22, 2017 at 4:47 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
moved most of the rest of the Schily Tools discussion up into the item discussing the use of osh and bosh as alternatives to posh for compatibility testing
Jun 22, 2017 at 4:32 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
updated diagram: added OpenBSD ksh, brought Almquist line into Korn/POSIX box; straightened line from Thompson to ksh93xx; cut ksh93xx off at 2012; added "-present" on ash due to FreeBSD etc.; moved key to other side
Jun 20, 2017 at 17:17 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
rewrote the Almquist/Busybox item for improved history and clarity; added osh/bosh alternative to posh and such; URL fixes
May 23, 2017 at 12:39 history edited CommunityBot
replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
Apr 13, 2017 at 12:36 history edited CommunityBot
replaced http://unix.stackexchange.com/ with https://unix.stackexchange.com/
Mar 9, 2017 at 18:04 history edited CommunityBot
replaced http://tangentsoft.net/ with https://tangentsoft.net/
Aug 18, 2015 at 19:53 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
updated shell family diagram file sizes, after marking the Bourne -> ksh82 path as direct descendant, per comment by schily
Aug 18, 2015 at 13:31 comment added schily If you like to know more relations, e.g. with UNOS "command", "bsh" and the recent Bourne Shell, send me a note. As a hint: UNOS command had a builtin command "do" that acted as a one-line shell script with arguments. This idea was transferred into the Bourne Shell as "dosh" and permits parameterizable aliases, something you cannot get from ksh or bash.
May 1, 2015 at 10:40 history bounty awarded terdon
Apr 29, 2015 at 15:40 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
typo fixes
Apr 29, 2015 at 15:34 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
moved the shebang para down into the "portability" discussion, and made several other minor improvements
Apr 29, 2015 at 14:42 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
added section on portable shell script programming
Apr 29, 2015 at 14:13 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
greatly expanded footnote 8, on the true Bourne shell; changed HTML superscripts to Unicode superscripts; other minor tweaks
Apr 24, 2015 at 10:22 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
clarified that "POSIX shell" is a spec, not a software product; added "Bash" to the list of late comers and otherwise tweaked that comment to make it clear that I'm contrasting against AT&T & BSD shells, not trying to drive some kind of wedge between bash vs zsh, etc.
Apr 24, 2015 at 10:11 history bounty awarded Stéphane Chazelas
Apr 24, 2015 at 3:58 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
added info on rc family; fixed "1977" release date for Bourne shell & UNIX V7; mentioned yash; updated diagram
Jul 27, 2014 at 2:05 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
reorganized the shell family diagram; lots early BSD history fixes; added a section on /bin/sh variations; moved Bourne shell on modern systems stuff to its own footnote; lots of minor tweaks
Jul 25, 2014 at 21:49 vote accept Praxeolitic
Jul 21, 2014 at 10:26 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
added Bourne/C family diagram; pdksh/mksh history fixes; added "csh considered harmful" link; explained why 2.9BSD and 4.1BSD were contemporaneous
Jul 20, 2014 at 9:41 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
BSD didn't get Bourne shell until 2.9BSD; moved most ksh discussion into the footnotes; added a bunch more historical stuff
Jul 20, 2014 at 3:35 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
changed speculation on pdksh vs bash since being told that it came out earlier than I found earlier; better explained the FreeBSD bash situation
Jul 20, 2014 at 2:47 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
moved a paragraph up a bit; added an earlier link to the C shell article
Jul 20, 2014 at 2:42 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
addressed "why are they different" explicitly; added free ksh source footnote; added bash --posix footnote; another clarity pass, mainly aimed at tightening up the ksh discussion
Jul 20, 2014 at 2:16 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
added a bunch of footnotes; clarified the ksh88 vs ksh93 vs POSIX shell thing; other clarifications
Jul 20, 2014 at 0:56 history edited Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0
added a bunch more commentary
Jul 20, 2014 at 0:34 history answered Warren Young CC BY-SA 3.0