Shell scripting may finally get a proper bug-checker. A group of academics has proposed static analysis techniques aimed at improving the correctness and reliability of Unix shell programs.

In the paper, the authors stress that shell programming is as prevalent as ever ... a specification language for Unix and Linux commands, and semantic models so that we can be confident that ...

This trait has a deep history, stretching all the way to the very first shell and the first UNIX system. Over time, UNIX shells acquired the programming capabilities by evolution, and this has led to ...

If you get a memory fault you can, in Unix, allocate more memory and then resume the program from where it left off. This was an infrequent event but made a significant difference to the performance ...