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[center][size=200]Battle of the shells[/size][/center]
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This is a thread about shells - the ways you can interact with your computer, via text. Windows calls explorer.exe a 'shell', but Windows terminology is pompous and weird, so it doesn't count.  :P

This is a debate thread to see which shell is the best. If you know a shell that's not represented in this thread, please suggest it to be added.

[size=150]dash (sh)[/size]

The original bourne shell - but faster. It's really light, which is why it's included in busybox, a lightweight package of unix utilities. It has the exact same features as the original bourne shell, though.

[list]
[*] I/O redirection and piping, which allows you to "hook up" the output of one program to a file, or to another program. There are even programs that can automatically paste the output of a program to pastebin or ix.io for you!
[*] For loops, if statements, and cases, with syntax largely taken from ALGOL.
[*] Substitute static text with the result of a command with backticks.
[*] Dynamically typed variables, and environment variables that can be exported and saved to be used by the entire system.[/list]

[size=150]bash[/size]

The bourne-again shell. It's a pun on "born again", and it was descended from the bourne shell. But, it has way more features.

[list]
[*] It has everything the bourne shell has.
[*] Compatibility - bash is compatible with the bourne shell, which is now reimplemented as dash on most systems. It's also available for lots of systems today - anything unix-like can have bash, and even systems that aren't unix-like, such as Microsoft Windows.
[*] Dotfiles - bash has dotfiles, which can be used on startup. ~/.bashrc is a list of commands to run on startup, while ~/.bash_profile sets environment variables.
[*] Process management - you can run child processes concurrently with the shell, which allows you to have things running in the background. Unix users call them daemons, and MS-DOS users call them memory resident programs.
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