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:
“I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
—Isaac Newton (1642–1727)