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If I switch from bash to fish, will anything break (e.g. aliases, scripts, keyboard shortcuts, etc.)?

by reledi 14y ago

Osmium 14y ago
Yes -- fish is not bash, so anything defined in your .bash_profile etc. will break, though there's usually an easy alternative way to do it in fish. Scripts should be fine though, since they usually explicitly call bash when you run them, so will still run using bash. I switched to fish about six months ago and have been very happy with it. I spend a lot of my working day in the command line, though not doing anything exotic, and find it very pleasant to use.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - Thrall 14y ago
    It wouldn't read your .bash_profile, because it cannot. Any variables that are set by your .bash_profile will therefore not be set, and anything that depends on them being set may break.
adwf 14y ago
Scripts will still work as long as they have the standard #!/bin/bash at the top. Aliases - in .bashrc - unfortunately will need to be replaced by Fish functions; defined in the "~/.config/fish/config.fish" file by default. The only real thing that keeps tripping me up with Fish is that it doesn't support shortcuts like "!$ ". I keep on typing that in, but due to the nature of Fish, it can't (or won't) recognise it. But the excellent history functionality does make up for this a fair bit. Having said that, Fish is by far the best shell I've tried. I gave zsh a go for about half a year and got fed up with the autocompletion and general slowness. As a shell, Fish just behaves quickly and fairly naturally, with few exceptions (!$ ...). I highly recommend it as an improvement over bash.
- kbd 14y ago
  > I keep on typing that in, but due to the nature of Fish, it can't (or won't) recognise it. But the excellent history functionality does make up for this a fair bit. I was interested in this comment so I looked into the documentation to find out why this is. Here's a link to the FAQ for anyone else interested: http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/user_doc/html/faq.html#faq-history http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/user_doc/html/faq.html#faq-h... (last question)
  - nemo1618 14y ago
    that works just as well I guess. But what if I want to make an alias for "sudo the last command"?
    - kbd 14y ago
      https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/288#issuecomment-11233013 https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/288#issuecom... has some options.
      - pooriaazimi 14y ago
        Wonderful! I made a slight variation (and also posted it there): function .runsudo --description 'Run current command line as root' set cursor_pos (echo (commandline -C) + 5 | bc) commandline -C 0 commandline -i 'sudo ' commandline -C "$cursor_pos" end bind \es ".runsudo" Instead of outright `execute`ing the command, the above would save the cursor position. You can (theoretically) bind `\cs` so control-s adds the sudo (instead of option-s), but I couldn't get it to work.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - GhotiFish 14y ago
    I'm a little sore that the FAQ Listed that as an alternative. That was how I did it in bash before I realized I could do "sudo !!" which was waaaaay more convenient. It's a step backwards. Which I'm fine with, as long as you step forward again, in some way.
qznc 14y ago
Fish is not a POSIX shell and does not try to be one. In contrast, bash, zsh, and others are supersets of the original sh and backwards-compatible. Fish is not. For example the exit code of the previous command, instead of POSIX $?, you can get it as $status.
dmit 14y ago
Look out for errors with third-party applications that shell out and expect to find bash or something compatible. I had to explicitly set shell=/bin/bash in .vimrc before any plugin initialization in order to avoid breakage after changing my login shell to fish.
Symmetry 14y ago
I've found that leaving your login shell as bash but making fish the default executable for any terminal emulators you use will pretty much prevent any breakage.

If I switch from bash to fish, will anything break (e.g. aliases, scripts, keyboard shortcuts, etc.)?

by reledi 14y ago

If I switch from bash to fish, will anything break (e.g. aliases, scripts, keyboard shortcuts, etc.)?

Yes -- fish is not bash, so anything defined in your .bash_profile etc. will break, though there's usually an easy alternative way to do it in fish. Scripts should be fine though, since they usually explicitly call bash when you run them, so will still run using bash. I switched to fish about six months ago and have been very happy with it. I spend a lot of my working day in the command line, though not doing anything exotic, and find it very pleasant to use.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- Thrall 14y ago
  It wouldn't read your .bash_profile, because it cannot. Any variables that are set by your .bash_profile will therefore not be set, and anything that depends on them being set may break.

adwf 14y ago

Scripts will still work as long as they have the standard #!/bin/bash at the top. Aliases - in .bashrc - unfortunately will need to be replaced by Fish functions; defined in the "~/.config/fish/config.fish" file by default. The only real thing that keeps tripping me up with Fish is that it doesn't support shortcuts like "!$ ". I keep on typing that in, but due to the nature of Fish, it can't (or won't) recognise it. But the excellent history functionality does make up for this a fair bit. Having said that, Fish is by far the best shell I've tried. I gave zsh a go for about half a year and got fed up with the autocompletion and general slowness. As a shell, Fish just behaves quickly and fairly naturally, with few exceptions (!$ ...). I highly recommend it as an improvement over bash.

kbd 14y ago
> I keep on typing that in, but due to the nature of Fish, it can't (or won't) recognise it. But the excellent history functionality does make up for this a fair bit. I was interested in this comment so I looked into the documentation to find out why this is. Here's a link to the FAQ for anyone else interested: http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/user_doc/html/faq.html#faq-history http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/user_doc/html/faq.html#faq-h... (last question)
- nemo1618 14y ago
  that works just as well I guess. But what if I want to make an alias for "sudo the last command"?
  - kbd 14y ago
    https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/288#issuecomment-11233013 https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/288#issuecom... has some options.
    - pooriaazimi 14y ago
      Wonderful! I made a slight variation (and also posted it there): function .runsudo --description 'Run current command line as root' set cursor_pos (echo (commandline -C) + 5 | bc) commandline -C 0 commandline -i 'sudo ' commandline -C "$cursor_pos" end bind \es ".runsudo" Instead of outright `execute`ing the command, the above would save the cursor position. You can (theoretically) bind `\cs` so control-s adds the sudo (instead of option-s), but I couldn't get it to work.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- GhotiFish 14y ago
  I'm a little sore that the FAQ Listed that as an alternative. That was how I did it in bash before I realized I could do "sudo !!" which was waaaaay more convenient. It's a step backwards. Which I'm fine with, as long as you step forward again, in some way.

qznc 14y ago

Fish is not a POSIX shell and does not try to be one. In contrast, bash, zsh, and others are supersets of the original sh and backwards-compatible. Fish is not. For example the exit code of the previous command, instead of POSIX $?, you can get it as $status.

dmit 14y ago

Look out for errors with third-party applications that shell out and expect to find bash or something compatible. I had to explicitly set shell=/bin/bash in .vimrc before any plugin initialization in order to avoid breakage after changing my login shell to fish.

Symmetry 14y ago

I've found that leaving your login shell as bash but making fish the default executable for any terminal emulators you use will pretty much prevent any breakage.