Editing Almquist shell (section)

==History==
ash was first released via a posting to the {{mono|[[comp.* hierarchy|comp]].sources.unix}} [[Usenet]] news group, approved and moderated by [[Rich Salz]] on 30 May 1989. It was described as "a reimplementation of the System V shell [with] most features of that shell, plus some additions".<ref>{{Cite web| title=v19i001: A reimplementation of the System V shell, Part01/08 | url=https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.sources.unix/A6cnyKX-Gq4/discussion | date=May 30, 1989 | editor=Rich Salz | editor-link=Rich Salz | author=Almquist, Kenneth | publisher=[[Usenet]] newsgroup, comp.sources.unix}}</ref>

Fast, small, and virtually compatible{{citation needed|date=February 2016}} with the [[POSIX]] standard's specification of the Unix shell, ash did not provide [[Line editor|line editing]] or [[command history]] mechanisms, because Almquist felt that such functionality should be moved into the [[Computer terminal|terminal]] [[Device driver|driver]]. However, modern variants support it.

The following is extracted from the ash package information from [[Slackware]] v14:

{{Blockquote|<p>ash (Kenneth Almquist's ash shell)</p><p>A lightweight (92K) Bourne compatible shell. Great for machines with low memory, but does not provide all the extras of shells like [[Bash (Unix shell)|bash]], [[tcsh]], and [[zsh]]. Runs most shell scripts compatible with the Bourne shell. Note that under [[Linux]], most scripts seem to use at least some bash-specific syntax. The Slackware setup scripts are a notable exception, since ash is the shell used on the install disks. [[NetBSD]] uses ash as its /bin/sh.</p>}}

Myriad forks have been produced from the original ash release.<ref name=vars>{{cite web |last1=Mascheck |first1=Sven |title=Ash (Almquist Shell) Variants
 |url=https://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/ash/ |website=www.in-ulm.de}}</ref> These derivatives of ash are installed as the default shell (<code>/bin/sh</code>) on [[FreeBSD]], [[NetBSD]], [[DragonFly BSD]], [[MINIX]], and in some [[Linux distribution]]s. MINIX 3.2 used the original ash version, whose [[test (Unix)|test]] feature differed from POSIX.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://invisible-island.net/autoconf/portability-test.html |title=TEST versus Portability |author=Thomas E. Dickey |year=2015 |access-date=March 1, 2020}}</ref>  That version of the shell was replaced in MINIX 3.3. Android used ash until [[Android Ice Cream Sandwich|Android 4.0]], at which point it switched to [[KornShell|mksh]].<ref>{{cite web
| url=https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core/+/master/shell_and_utilities/README.md
| title=Android's shell and utilities
| author=Elliott Hughes
| date=2018-06-20
| access-date=2020-02-29}}</ref>