The Bourne shell (sh) is a shell (computing), or command-line interpreter, for computer operating systems.
The Bourne shell was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7. Most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh—which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell—even when other shells are used by most users.
Developed by Stephen Bourne at Bell Labs, it was a replacement for the Thompson shell, whose executable file had the same name—sh. It was released in 1977 in the Version 7 Unix release distributed to colleges and universities. Although it is used as an interactive command interpreter, it was always intended as a scripting language and contains all the features that are commonly considered to produce structured programs.
It gained popularity with the publication of The UNIX Programming Environment by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike—the first commercially published book that presented the shell as a programming language in a tutorial form.
Read more about Bourne Shell: Origins, Features of The Original Version, Features Introduced Past 1979, Criticism, Descendants, Usage, Quotes
Famous quotes containing the word shell:
“We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)