What is KornShell?
KornShell (ksh) is a Unix shell and command language written by David Korn in the early 1980s. It is backward-compatible with the Bourne shell and includes many additional features from the Bash and C shells.
Some key features of KornShell include:
- Interactive scripting and debugging
- Job control
- Command history and editing
- Alias and function definitions
- String editing operations
- Integer arithmetic operations
- Advanced test/conditional expressions
KornShell is designed to create shell scripts that are portable and powerful. It became especially popular for writing system administration scripts and complex shell programs. The interactive features for debugging scripts and its compatibility made it an attractive alternative to bash or csh for many developers and power users.
While it has been largely superseded by bash on Linux and zsh on macOS, KornShell continues to be used today on commercial Unix platforms like AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris. The license terms are also friendlier compared to bash. So if you need advanced scripting capabilities and POSIX/Unix compatibility, KornShell is still a good option to consider.
Zsh, win-bash, GNU Bourne Again SHell, Nu Shell, DASH Shell, the xonsh shell, Ergonomica, Closh, rc - a shell, fshell, Elvish, Xiki, Janetsh, OverOS, eltclsh are some alternatives to KornShell.