Talk:Bash (Unix shell)

Article title is wrong

GNU's Not Unix Bash is not a Unix shell. The correct title would be "Bash (Unix-like shell)" or "Bash (GNU shell)" Suiseiseki42 (talk) 06:14, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

It seems to me that, strictly speaking, you are correct. It's in the name: GNU's Not UNIX.

There are 15-20 different entries on the "Bash" disambiguation page as of today. The search bar algorithm produces "Bashar al-Assad," "Dana Bash," "Martin Bashir," a football club, and a few other things. "Bash" as one word alone in English is usually read as a verb. Unfortunately, "Bash Shell" can be mis-read as an imperative sentence in and of itself.

15 shells are listed in the "Unix-like" section of List of command-line interpreters. There are ~20 shells are listed in the "Unix Shells" section of the Bash page at this time. Half of them have one of the strings 'Shell' or '_Shell' in their page titles. A quarter of the shells listed do not (at this moment) have links to Wikipedia pages. Additionally, the pages for rc (Unix shell) and fish (Unix shell) both have "(Unix Shell)" in their titles, for a total of 12 out of 20. The disambiguation page for "rc" is about three pages. 8 of 20 pages have either "Unix shell" or both words "Unix" and "shell" in their first paragraphs. fish (Unix shell) and Google Shell are the only ones with "Unix-like" in their first paragraphs, but Goosh is a search engine interface, rather than a command interpreter as Bash is.

What is the default command interpreter in modern UNIXes: HP-UX (as it reaches EOL, iirc), AIX, etc...? I believe Bash is available on all of the BSD's, in Oracle Solaris, and OpenIndiana, though I could be mistaken, and depending on how one defines "UNIX."

- "Bash_(Shell_Program)" could work; people might not know what a "shell" is.

- "Bash_(Command-line Interpreter)" is more specific.

- "Bash_(Computer_Program)" might be sufficient for total newbies, I suppose.

It seems to me that Bash is about as much a "Unix Shell" as the other shells are: ash, csh, fish, ksh, sash, tcsh, tsh, zsh. Most of the UNIX-like OS's in production use are Android, Linux, MacOS, or BSD rather than UNIX. So it seems to be a question somewhere in the vacinity of trademark concerns.

The Open Group has a Trademark page: "Our Trademarks should not be hyphenated, combined to form a new word, combined with other words. ... Incorrect: TOGAF-Certified, UNIX-based, UNIX-like, PC-to-UNIX, T*9 certification."

https://www.opengroup.org/trademarks Neat93867 (talk) 02:34, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

I think "Unix Shell" cane be interpreted as "Shell for Unix" (which bash is), and not necessarily "Shell by Unix" (which bash isn't), so the title seems correct. QuBeWorks (talk) 07:42, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

While Bash can be used as a shell on a Unix, Bash is primarily a shell for that isn't for Unix - it's for GNU. As Bash is not Unix-certified, it is trademark infringement of the "open group's" trademark, to refer to Bash as a "Unix shell". The "open group" may not like people writing "Unix-like", but they can't do anything about it, other than complaining on their website, as hyphenating a trademark, with -not, or -like, to point out that something isn't that trademark, is legally allowed. Either "Bash_(Unix-like_shell)" or "Bash_(GNU_shell)" or "Bash_(Shell_Program)" are all titles that wouldn't infringe the "open group's" trademark.Suiseiseki42 (talk) 10:32, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Maybe this should actually be settled on Unix shell instead, since this article follows the definition present there: "A Unix shell is a shell that provides a command-line user interface for a Unix-like operating system." QuBeWorks (talk) 13:12, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Linux has an RfC

Linux has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Victor Matheus Amaral (talk • contribs) 21:54, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

"Login and non-login shells" should be split into a separate page

Most of the information under this section is not specific to Bash. It's instead a good and concise definition of what a login shell is. The articles linked in that section (and in particular the "Main article") do not even mention the term "login shell".

Therefore this section should be split into its own article, so that there is a centralized definition of what a login shell is. QuBeWorks (talk) 11:56, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps the Login article would be more appropriate?

Main article: Login

Neat93867 (talk) 02:54, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

But the login shell does a lot more than just logging you in, right ?

Maybe it could be a section in Unix shell instead of its own page ? QuBeWorks (talk) 07:36, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

$0 is not a positional parameter

"A positional parameter is a parameter denoted by one or more digits, other than the single digit 0." - https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Positional-Parameters-1 Neat93867 (talk) 19:10, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Ok, that's not what the reference I checked before undoing said, but the manual is probably correct. Reverted. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:14, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

What reference were you looking at? Neat93867 (talk) 21:26, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

https://hbctraining.github.io/Training-modules/Accelerate_with_automation/lessons/positional_params.html, and there was also https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/arguments-options-bash-scripts SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:33, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Oh Jesus. When even redhat.com gets it wrong....... o_O Neat93867 (talk) 22:46, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

Alphabetizing citation fields

Continued from a discussion on my individual talk page:

In my opinion, the person who does the drudge work of auditing citations - to make sure they're correct and the links are still valid - can decide for themselves how to format their efforts. Neat93867 (talk) 19:54, 30 June 2026 (UTC)

As I said on your talk page, as you're doing this across a wide variety of articles, this is not the place to discuss it. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Citation cleanup#Alphabetizing parameter fields would be better. SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:16, 30 June 2026 (UTC)