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C Shell

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Description #

C Shell (csh) is a Unix shell with syntax inspired by the C programming language. It was designed to make shell scripting more accessible to C programmers and includes features like history, aliases, and job control.

History #

C Shell was developed in the late 1970s by Bill Joy at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of the BSD UNIX distribution. It introduced several interactive features that were not available in the Bourne shell (sh), such as command history and job control. Although csh has largely been superseded by more modern shells like Bash and Zsh, it remains historically significant and is still available on many Unix systems.

Hello World Code #

#!/bin/csh
echo "Hello, World!"

How to Run #

Option 1: Online

Option 2: Local

Ensure csh is installed:

which csh

Save as hello.csh and run:

csh hello.csh

    Key Concepts #

    1. C-like syntax (if, foreach, etc.)
    2. Built-in job control
    3. Command history and editing
    4. Aliases for shortcuts
    5. Interactive scripting shell
    6. Less scripting-friendly than sh or bash
    7. Poor error handling compared to modern shells
    8. Still available on many Unix systems
    9. Support for tilde expansion
    10. Legacy scripting in some BSD-based environments

    Try It Online #

    Fun Facts #

    • Developed by Bill Joy, who also created vi and co-founded Sun Microsystems.
    • One of the first shells to introduce command history and aliasing.
    • While outdated, some legacy systems still use csh-based scripts.

    Resources #

    Updated on June 8, 2025

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