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Elvish VS KornShell

Compare Elvish VS KornShell and see what are their differences

Elvish logo Elvish

Friendly and expressive Unix shell

KornShell logo KornShell

The KornShell language was designed and developed by David G. Korn at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
  • Elvish Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-29
  • KornShell Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-12-21

Elvish features and specs

  • User-Friendly Syntax
    Elvish features a syntax that is both expressive and easy to read, making it approachable for newcomers and experienced users alike.
  • Interactive and Scripted Use
    It supports both interactive use as a shell and scripting, allowing users to leverage its power in various environments.
  • Rich Interactive Features
    Elvish offers features like a powerful, customizable prompt, auto-suggestions, and command history, enhancing the interactive shell experience.
  • Extensible and Composable
    Users can extend the shell's functionality with custom scripts and modules, promoting a highly composable workflow.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Designed to run on multiple operating systems, Elvish provides a consistent experience across platforms.

Possible disadvantages of Elvish

  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to more established shells, Elvish has a smaller ecosystem of plugins and extensions, which may limit its functionality for some users.
  • Learning Curve
    While its syntax is user-friendly, transitioning from more traditional shells may require an adjustment period for habitual users.
  • Performance Overhead
    Due to its advanced features, Elvish may have a higher performance overhead compared to simpler shells, impacting speed in some use cases.
  • Less Mature Compared to Alternatives
    As a relatively new shell, Elvish may not be as stable or feature-complete as longer-established shells like Bash or Zsh.

KornShell features and specs

  • Compatibility
    KornShell (ksh) maintains backward compatibility with Bourne Shell (sh), making it easy for users familiar with sh to transition without altering their existing scripts substantially.
  • Advanced Scripting Features
    ksh offers advanced scripting capabilities such as associative arrays, floating-point arithmetic, and built-in regular expressions, providing more powerful and flexible scripting tools.
  • Job Control
    It provides robust job control, allowing users to manage and switch between multiple background tasks and processes easily.
  • Interactive Use
    ksh supports features like command aliasing, history manipulation, and inline editing, enhancing its utility in interactive command-line environments.
  • Performance
    ksh scripts often execute faster than those written in other shells like csh, due to more efficient resource management and execution mechanisms.

Possible disadvantages of KornShell

  • Complexity
    ksh is more complex compared to simpler shells like sh, making it potentially overwhelming for beginners or those seeking simplicity.
  • Portability
    Not all systems come with ksh pre-installed, and differences between ksh88 and ksh93 can lead to portability issues across different Unix-like systems.
  • Learning Curve
    Due to its rich feature set, ksh has a steeper learning curve, which could be a barrier for new users unfamiliar with shell scripting.
  • Limited Adoption
    Despite its capabilities, ksh is not as widely adopted as other shells like bash or zsh, meaning less community support and fewer resources available.
  • Licensing
    ksh is under the Common Public License, which may pose constraints for users or organizations compared to more permissively licensed shells.

Elvish videos

The Elvish Tac R-hop || Gameplay and Impressions

More videos:

  • Review - Elvish Yadav Roasting famehouse
  • Review - Kaldheim Commander Golgari CMDR Deck | Elvish Empire

KornShell videos

No KornShell videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Elvish and KornShell)
Cryptocurrencies
54 54%
46% 46
Blockchain
53 53%
47% 47
Developer Tools
64 64%
36% 36
Development
34 34%
66% 66

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, KornShell seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 1 time since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Elvish mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Elvish yet. Tracking of Elvish recommendations started around Mar 2021.

KornShell mentions (1)

  • Trying to Set-up android9(ver6) in VirtualBox
    Well now I'm at the point that I see it's calling for the Korn shell, which I'm not directly familiar with, and seemed to stop on the mouse input driver. I'll change my VBox mouse device settings and see what happens from there... Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Elvish and KornShell, you can also consider the following products

fish shell - The friendly interactive shell.

PowerShell Plus - Learn how to learn and master PowerShell fast with an interactive learning center, a powerful IDE, pre-loaded scripts, and a PowerShell Editorโ€ฆ all for free.

zsh - The Z shell (Zsh) is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a powerful command interpreter for shell scripting.

GNU Bourne Again SHell - Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, that will appear in the GNU operating system.

PowerGui - A graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows https://alternativeto.

Tcl - Already one of the world's best-selling consumer electronics brands, TCL is now the fastest-growing TV brand in North America. TCL TVs feature stylish design and the latest technology.