Hamilton C Shell: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:30, 5 September 2023

Originally released in 1988 for OS/2 1.x as a commercially supported clone of the Berkeley C shell alongside 20 other utilities that made using the shell and porting Berkeley C script files to OS/2 easier. The Berkeley C shell is a shell that was originally supplied as an alternative shell for the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), it had a batch language that was much more C like than what the traditional UNIX shells offered, the original C Shell however uses a slow interpreter for executing its batch files while the Hamilton version actually uses a built-in compiler.

The original release for OS/2 1.x allows you to use 64k heaps for command lines and pipes, meaning that you can have command lines considerably longer than the 256-character limit of the CMD.EXE.

Versions

1.0 (Dec 1988) - first release for OS/2 1.0
1.01 (Jan 1989) - final release for OS/2 1.0
1.02 (Feb 1989) - first release for OS/2 1.1 (PM)
1.03 (Mar 1989) - base release for OS/2 1.1
1.04 (Aug 1989) - Command line editing and filename and command completion added.
1.05 (Mar 1990) - Support for OS/2 1.2, HPFS and long filenames, new utilities: grep, diff, head, tail, sed
1.06 (Feb 1991) - user-defined screen colours, inheritable local variables
2.0 (Jul 1992) - 32-bit release for Windows NT (i386, MIPS, AXP)
2.1 (Apr 1993) - Support for Berkeley mode scripts, better error diagnostics
2.2 (Sep 1993) - Support for starting Win3.x apps seamlessly from the command line under OS/2 2.x. Addition of the cron utility.
2.3 (Aug 1998) - Full support for #! syntax

Links

Tom Yager: OS/2, Unix Style: Hamilton C Shell and MKS OS/2 Toolkit provide Unix-like shells for OS/2 - Byte magazine (Feb 1990)
Scott Richman: Examining the Hamilton C Shell: Unix power for OS/2 - Dr. Dobb's (Jan 1991)

License and availability

Closed source commercial software, the OS/2 version of the Hamilton C Shell was discontinued in 2003, the Windows version is still being sold.
Original list price in 1990 was 350 USD.

Author & publisher

Hamilton Laboratories
Nicole Hamilton

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 ==Versions==
-*Dec 1988: 1.0 - first release for OS/2 1.0
+*1.0 (Dec 1988) - first release for OS/2 1.0
-*Jan 1989: 1.01 - final release for OS/2 1.0
+*1.01 (Jan 1989) - final release for OS/2 1.0
-*Feb 1989: 1.02 - first release for OS/2 1.1 (PM)
+*1.02 (Feb 1989) - first release for OS/2 1.1 (PM)
-*Mar 1989: 1.03 - base release for OS/2 1.1
+*1.03 (Mar 1989) - base release for OS/2 1.1
-*Aug 1989: 1.04 - Command line editing and filename and command completion added.
+*1.04 (Aug 1989) - Command line editing and filename and command completion added.
-*Mar 1990: 1.05 - Support for OS/2 1.2, HPFS and long filenames, new utilities: grep, diff, head, tail, [[sed]]
+*1.05 (Mar 1990) - Support for OS/2 1.2, HPFS and long filenames, new utilities: grep, diff, head, tail, [[sed]]
-*Feb 1991: 1.06 - user-defined screen colors, inheritable local variables
+*1.06 (Feb 1991) - user-defined screen colours, inheritable local variables
-*Jul 1992: 2.0 - 32-bit release for Windows NT (i386, MIPS, AXP)
+*2.0 (Jul 1992) - 32-bit release for Windows NT (i386, MIPS, AXP)
+*2.1 (Apr 1993) - Support for Berkeley mode scripts, better error diagnostics
+*2.2 (Sep 1993) - Support for starting Win3.x apps seamlessly from the command line under OS/2 2.x. Addition of the cron utility.
+*2.3 (Aug 1998) - Full support for #! syntax
 ==Links==