Jokes That the C Shell Told Me Quiz

Answer: rm: God non-existent

An unexpected theological statement from a mere piece of software!

The C Shell (CSH hereafter) was first introduced by BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) in 1979.

A shell is a command line interpreter which presents its user with an easy-to-learn easy-to-use interface with the underlying Unix kernel.

Important to note that all the "jokes" I am presenting in this quiz have been successfully tested on the CSH which is included in the HPUX11 distribution. In other words, although it may not always seem so, these are for real. Most should work on most other distributions, but given the diverse nature of Unix (and Linux) I cannot guarantee a 100% success.

Answer: True

Very true :-)

It is said that there is absolutely no need to explain a good joke, so I won't break this rule throughout this quiz.

Instead I will give you some tidbits on CSH.

Did you know that while working for the BSD Unix team in Berkeley, Bill Joy also contributed to the development of the immortal VI editor as well as major network protocols such as TCP/IP and NFS?

Answer: Too many ('s.

Governments do seem to have the perpetual habit of throwing too much of our money down the drain.

Bill Joy called it the C Shell because he made a move towards a syntax which resembles the C programming language.

Answer: Unmatched ".

Great minds think alike, and CSH just verified this by affirming your view on John Doe.

C Shell has introduced more than a few enhancements which were unavailable in its predecessor (the Bourne shell) - built-in arithmetic operators, command line history editing, job control and command aliases, to name a few.

Answer: None of these

No Unix system will take such measures against an innocent user.

But, as you may have already noticed, CSH has its own special way of letting you know you have done wrong.

In the case of "make love", CSH will issue the slightly harsh response:

"Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop."

Answer: Missing ].

Cannot blame CSH for choosing to be plain informative on this one.

The main issue with C Shell over the years was that it did not prove robust and unambiguous enough for scripting purposes. The majority of Unix shell scripts are written with Bourne Shell (SH), and later with Korn (KSH) and Bourne Again (BASH) shells.

Answer: cat: Cannot open food in cans

Poor feline.

In an attempt to improve on the missing features and problems of CSH, a new shell was devised. It was called TCSH (Tenex C Shell) and was the default shell of a few operating systems, most notably the Mac OS X, which replaced it with the near-standard BASH later.

Answer: dog: Command not found.

Have you ever taught Scooby Doo to obey to "sit down!"?

CSH introduced another important concept which was incorporated into the shells which prevail in the Unix and Linux world today - the customizable environment. Each user logging into the Unix server can customize their working environment by creating independent command prompt, command aliases and environment variables.

Answer: No manual entry for sex.

I also think that sex and commands do not go well hand in hand.

Bill Joy went on from Berkeley in 1982 to co-found Sun Microsystems. He stayed there until 2003.

Answer: True

Too many arguments are undesirable both in marriage life and in the "man" command.

Nicole Hamilton developed the "Hamilton C Shell" for Windows. It simulates Unix C Shell behaviour and environment for Windows users who prefer to work and code with C Shell syntax.

Answer: bad character

Any character other than 0-9 is considered a bad character by sleep, and so does the deprived issuer of this erroneous command.

In many modern Linux and even Unix distributions, CSH has been deprecated. For example, in Red Hat Linux the command "csh" has been linked to "tcsh". In other words, CSH is not really included in this distribution and when you type "csh" you actually invoke TCSH.

Answer: No such job

Sorry. Maybe I should have X-rated this quiz. Hope you give it a fair rating after all.

"%blow: No such job." - virtual chastity!

Sun Microsystems has more than a few technologies to its name. The Java technology introduced by Sun Microsystems in 1995 has been once of the major building blocks of the Internet. Java technology enables a one-time developing effort for applications that will run on any computer environment.

Answer: ^How did the sex change operation go?^

A bit tricky, there is no "modify" command in Unix.

Here are the first lines of "man csh" (csh manual pages):

NAME
csh - a shell (command interpreter) with C-like syntax

SYNOPSIS
csh [-cefinstvxTVX] [command_file] [argument_list ...]

DESCRIPTION
csh is a command language interpreter that incorporates a command
history buffer, C-like syntax, and job control facilities.

Answer: ar: creating Money

How generous!

A more common variation of "ar" is "tar" (the added "t" stands for "tape"). Please don't panic when you hear Unix avids talk about "tarballs". We're not that perverse, "tarball" is the common lingo for a tar archive.

Answer: No match.

If only that match was available.

Thanks for taking this quiz. Thanks to Bill Joy for enabling all these lapses of the earnest machine. Hope you had as much fun as I had writing it and collecting/recollecting these gems. Adios!