What is the difference between different shells? How are bash, sh, tcsh, csh, ksh, zsh, and whatever other ones different?

Why are there so many, and is bash the most popular? Are the shells really that different in shell script syntax?

Isn't that sort of like asking someone to tell you what's the diiference bewteen a ford, chevy, nissan, volvo, toyota, cadillac, bmw, fiat, kia?

They're all cars. They have differences.

Don't confuse yourself to much. Linux is a massive universe and you can get lost pretty fast. It is also why it is in my opinion, so powerful.

SH and BASH are the most common shell on popular distros today. BASH (Boure Again Shell) combines most of the good features from all of those other shells, it's syntax is pretty common from a programming standpoint and you will not need to use any other for your scripting needs.

If you learn BASH scripting, along the way you will read about others shells origins and functions in context of what you are learning and it will become clearer.

Let's just say that BASH is the result of the evolution of shells in UNIX / Linux systems.

yes, well... ford is old, chevy is cheap, nissan is crap, volvo is safe....

i'd never really questioned this myself, always used bash and never asked 'why?'

...researching...

Hey, I have a Chevy and is awesome Thanks, I have always used bash too, but I noticed my dad using csh on old solaris systems (which seemed to be the default on solaris). He never does shell scritping...

here ya go gang...

http://computing.fnal.gov/cd/unixlin...ml/shells.html

[edit]
-- or specifically: http://computing.fnal.gov/cd/unixlin...ells.html#4132
[/edit]

and here's the big reference: http://consult.cern.ch/writeup/shellchoice/main.ps

^^ yup that's the only format it comes in...

...well -- that was published in '94... i wonder how relevant it still is...

good enough for me, though -- my work here is done!

it doesn't matter what shell you use when you write a script (in a file)
that's why you always start with when you write a bash script. You can execute this under tcsh or csh. The system recognizes this line and uses bash to execute the script.

I think all unix system use csh or tcsh as default