mksh (MirBSD Korn Shell)

JohannesSM64 · 2011-06-28 14:43:37

Surprised this isn't mentioned here. mksh is about 1/4th the codebase size of bash (and even less since it doesn't depend on GNU libreadline), yet does everything I need. It's also faster, for scripts as well as interactive use. And it's actively developed.

The AUR package is out of date, I've posted updated files but they haven't been published yet, so meanwhile:

PKGBUILD: https://github.com/JohannesSM64/Configs … h/PKGBUILD
.install: https://github.com/JohannesSM64/Configs … sh.install

Copy/paste to try it:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/JohannesSM64/Configs/raw/master/abs/mksh/PKGBUILD
wget https://github.com/JohannesSM64/Configs/raw/master/abs/mksh/mksh.install
makepkg -sci

Here's my .mkshrc: https://github.com/JohannesSM64/Configs … ter/mkshrc

For more examples, see /usr/share/mksh/dot.mkshrc.

Last edited by JohannesSM64 (2011-07-04 19:41:29)

pseudonomous · 2011-06-28 15:29:41

Personally, I'm a huge fan of the OpenBSD korn shell. One of the great things about that was, as long as you kept your .bashrc old-school (e.g. use "." instead of "source"), you could just stick in .profile and things would work. I never tried the linux port , though. Did play around briefly with pdksh and *real* ksh on Solaris, but these shells always seemed kind of flaky at dealing with basic things, like even consistently interpreting "delete" and "backspace"; basically my memory of using these shells is seeing a bunch of escape codes getting written to screen instead of being interpretted by the shell.

So I was pretty surpised to find out the OpenBSD korn shell actually functions, not only that, but behaves almost *exactly* the way I expected it to. IIRC mksh was also good in terms of functionality, but it had it's own syntax for a bunch of stuff, like specifying a PS1, so I gave up on it and went back to bash.

JohannesSM64 · 2011-06-28 16:31:19

Actually, it's bash that has it's own syntax (minilanguage) for PS1, mksh skips that and instead dynamically expands variables and command substitutions in a single-quoted PS1 string. You really don't need the minilanguage, mksh's method is more flexible. Also, from the author:

I still offer a prompt conversion service (send me any GNU bash or oksh $PS1 and I’ll send that to you in mksh(1) syntax – optionally with adjustments/improvements, like cwd uses only up to 1/3 of screen width).

pseudonomous · 2011-06-29 23:34:27

Informative comment; I just gave up after discovering the mksh didn't evaulate my .profile the way I wanted it to. There's definately a strength in just evaluating variables.

Anthony Bentley · 2011-07-01 00:22:10

mksh is also the default shell in Android now.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-28 14:43:37

mksh (MirBSD Korn Shell)

#2 2011-06-28 15:29:41

Re: mksh (MirBSD Korn Shell)

#3 2011-06-28 16:31:19

Re: mksh (MirBSD Korn Shell)

#4 2011-06-29 23:34:27

Re: mksh (MirBSD Korn Shell)

#5 2011-07-01 00:22:10

Re: mksh (MirBSD Korn Shell)

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