What does HackerNews think of ble.sh?

> The joke here is: All this requires additional scripts / configs.

You mean a single line.

    autoload -Uz compinit; compinit

> With those scripts / config there is no difference between shells.

As I wrote in my original comment, bash only does filepath completion most of the time even with third party completion scripts. And I have never seen bash completion provide descriptions alongside subcommands or CLI options.

> https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh

ble.sh is impressive work, but it's a hack that won't be as reliable or compatible without built-in support for programmatic manipulation of the command line buffer in bash. ble.sh works around bash limitations by diverting key input from readline and reimplementing its features. It contains workarounds for specific terminals, and scripts have to be modified to accommodate ble.sh. IIRC FZF's shell integration required modifications to work with ble.sh.

> Nobody ever could show me even one feature that isn't available in almost all popular shells!

Read the parts of my original comment which you haven't quoted.

> When you tune your ̵c̵a̵r̵ shell it has nice features afterwards…

Only to the extent that the shell lets you. Also, having features bundled in the default installation helps tremendously even if it's not enabled by default.

> I came to the conclusion that zsh is just a stupid hype of "cool kids". It's the same as with the car tuning crowd.

That was uncalled for. If you don't want to use zsh, that fine but don't assume things and throw insults at those who do.

> But please wake me up when there is some real innovation regarding shells!

The original comment was about how zsh compares to bash, not a critique of the unix shell.

Nice, there's also ble.sh -- a bash replacement of readline that has zsh/fish-like syntax colors and completion. It is actively developed and the maintainer has implemented 2 features I've requested in a matter of hours.

If you want to check it out: https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh

(Still, I personally believe these features are overrated and don't actually bring in more usability or comfort to the command line experience. For instance, ctrl+r kills the need for suggestions and instead of selecting files scrolling through them with your fingers, you can select them using your eyes?)

I stay with bash due to its 100% availability on all systems I use, with https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh I got all the auto-complete I need too.

Many of the features are also achievable with pure bash with ble.sh (https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh).

> bash is far behind concerning interactivity.

Is it really? Projects like ble.sh [1] seem to pull off advanced features like syntax highlighting and enhanced completion with pure bash without the need for reimplementing a whole shell from the ground up.

1.: https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh

ble.sh[0] is also good autocompletion and syntax highlighting solution for bash.

[0]: https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh

There is already a de facto standard for extended codes: Xterm's modifyOtherKeys.

Applications:

https://vimhelp.org/map.txt.html#modifyOtherKeys

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/d68f2b8681f8eeb6b...

https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh

https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/commit/47c0d2038807757207cd...

https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki/Modifier-Keys#extended-key...

https://github.com/magiblot/tvision/commit/a50569f549465c9ed...

Terminals:

xterm (obviously)

https://github.com/gnachman/iTerm2/commit/ac1aa575011028ed86...

https://github.com/r-c-f/foot

https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/commit/d360d077d1f7723b1...

https://github.com/tomszilagyi/zutty

https://github.com/mintty/mintty/blob/master/wiki/CtrlSeqs.m...

OK thanks, that's helpful! It looks like a lot of the newer terminal rendering library use "diff" style of rendering like web frameworks, rather than something more stateful like curses?

Is that why you thought it would be easier? You just update the entire page on every action, and it takes care of the details of coming up with the minimal terminal codes?

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This is only tangentially related, but for those interested in programming in obscure languages, I recently discovered ble.sh which is a 30K+ line TUI for bash written in pure bash! It does basically what the fish shell does, so it has a terminal rendering library, utf-8 decoder, terminal decoder, bash parser with an AST, etc. all in bash.

https://github.com/akinomyoga/ble.sh

Some details from the author on this wiki page:

https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/How-Interactive-Shells-...

Other big shell programs:

https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/The-Biggest-Shell-Progr...

Latest Oil release makes progress on running these:

http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/04/release-0.8.pre4.html