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Why there are multiple shells in a Unix like system?

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http://unix.stackexchange.com – I have just started learning the fundamentals of Unix and wondering why there are so many shells in a unix like system . From the book Advanced programing in Unix Environment: A shell is a command-line interpreter that reads user input and executes commands.The user input to a shell is normally from the terminal (an interactive shell) or sometimes from a file (called a shell script). And then the book goes on to list a number of shell programs like Bourne shell,Bourne-again shell,Cshell, etc . My question is basically why do we need multiple shells ? (HowTos)

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Submitted by Danial on 11/29/2012

Stories similar to Why there are multiple shells in a Unix like system?

From the book Advanced Programming in the Unix environment:

Linux uses the Bourne-again shell for its default shell.

According to wikipedia, the Bourne shell was introduced in 1977 and C shell in 1978, but unix itself dates back to 1969.

If you were using a unix system before 1977, what shell would you have been using?

Hey everybody, I've been searching google and these forums and have found some solutions to the issues I've been having today within the Bourne Shell.

Hey everybody, I've been searching google and these forums and have found some solutions to the issues I've been having today within the OLD Bourne Shell.

The command line is a powerful way to interact with a Linux computer. Instead of using the mouse, you just type commands into the shell. (The shell is a blank window where you type in your commands.) So for example, instead of clicking on your file browser, you simply type ls [enter] to display the contents of your working directory.

I have been looking at /etc/profile. bash.bashrc to see how they are run, and notice that some are executed by non-login shells, some work with interactive shells etc.

What are the differences in this type of shells, ie interactive & non-interactive, login & non-login etc?

The question may be pretty basic,but it seems I need to ask what a shell is, first and foremost.

I have been looking at /etc/profile. bash.bashrc to see how they are run, and notice that some are executed by non-login shells, some work with interactive shells etc.

What are the differences in this type of shells, ie interactive & non-interactive, login & non-login etc?

The question may be pretty basic,but it seems I need to ask what a shell is, first and foremost.

FTP user Issue and /etc/shells 35 weeks 3 days ago

Hi , I am trying to create a limited ftp user for a company on Solaris 10 . (uname : 5.10 i386) I use /bin/true shell for the user ((and use ftpconfig -d and adding user in ftpaccess guestuser)) but the problem is that when I try to log in by FTP it cannot login. when I change the shell to bash it works I tried to check the /etc/shells but there is no /etc/shells available

another quest

I'd like to be able to print the current line number in a shell script. I know about the $LINENO variable in Bash shells, but it doesn't seem to exist in Bourne shells. Is there any other variable or way I can get the line number?

Thanks