I wonder what is the origin of this "/bin/sh" and why it's often assumed that sh is in /bin by default. The standard is pretty clear about that: "Applications

I wonder what is the origin of this "/bin/sh" and why it's often assumed that sh is in /bin by default. The standard is pretty clear about that: "Applications should note that the standard PATH to the shell cannot be assumed to be either /bin/sh or /usr/bin/sh, and should be determined by interrogation of the PATH returned by getconf PATH, ensuring that the returned pathname is an absolute pathname and not a shell built-in." "Furthermore, on systems that support executable scripts (the "#!" construct), it is recommended that applications using executable scripts install them using getconf PATH to determine the shell pathname and update the "#!" script appropriately as it is being installed (for example, with sed)." Ref: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sh.html https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/s... So, apparently on systems, where sh resides in /bin, "getconf CONF" will return /bin . However, this is not always the case. For example, on my Fedora Linux it is /usr/bin $ getconf PATH /usr/bin $ ls -l /usr/bin/sh lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4 Jan 2 2023 /usr/bin/sh -> bash $ ls -l /bin/sh lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 4 Jan 2 2023 /bin/sh -> bash $ ls -ld /bin lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Aug 9 2022 /bin -> usr/bin