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She Sells C Shells

The C shell is popular among some users as a shell for interacting with the computer because it allows simple scripts to be written more easily. However, the C shell scripting language is limited in a number of ways, many of which are hard to work around. For this reason, use of the C shell scripting language for writing significant scripts is not recommended. For more information, read “CSH Programming Considered Harmful” at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/.

However, the C shell scripting language has its uses, particularly when writing scripts that set up environment variables for interactive shell environments. Where possible, the C shell syntax is presented alongside the Bourne shell syntax within this "basics” chapter.

Apart from this chapter, however, this document does not generally cover the C shell syntax. If after reading this, you still want to write a more complex script using the C shell programming language, you can find more information in on the C shell in the manual page for csh.

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