oksh

It depends on what you are looking for. My recommendation for learning "how is X done in a shell" is the OpenBSD ksh: https://github.com/ibara/oksh It's what they use for /bin/sh, it has everything that a complete shell needs (including a mechanism for providing command completions) and has code that is much easier to read than bash or zsh. Something that I also would recommend is the design document for the plan9 rc shell; it is a worthwhile read for anybody interested in shells: https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc An implementation is also available if one wants to look at how it could be done: https://github.com/rakitzis/rc

All of Android is still based on a pdksh-derivative known as mksh, which is an enormous install base. http://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm OpenBSD switched their default shell to their own pdksh-derivative known as oksh. https://github.com/ibara/oksh There was an effort to (re)start ksh93 development, but AT&T halted this effort. The bugfixes from the failed effort have moved back into Korn's last release. https://github.com/ksh93/ksh/tree/dev

I've added links to the below quote: >"oasis uses smaller and simpler implementations of libraries and tools whenever possible: musl instead of glibc (https://www.musl-libc.org/) sbase instead of coreutils (https://git.suckless.org/sbase/file/README.html) ubase instead of util-linux (https://git.suckless.org/ubase/file/README.html) pigz instead of gzip (https://zlib.net/pigz/) mandoc instead of man-db (https://mandoc.bsd.lv/) bearssl instead of openssl (https://bearssl.org/) oksh instead of bash (https://github.com/ibara/oksh) sdhcp instead of dhclient or dhcpcd (https://core.suckless.org/sdhcp/) vis instead of vim or emacs (https://github.com/martanne/vis) byacc instead of bison (https://invisible-island.net/byacc/) perp and sinit instead of sysvinit or system 44 (http://b0llix.net/perp/ https://github.com/wereHamster/perp https://troubl

David Korn's ksh93 was passed on to a new set of developers, who attempted to release a new version; AT&T rolled back these changes due to performance problems which raised questions of support status. It does appear that ksh93 development has resumed, and a new version was released late last year. https://github.com/ksh93/ksh/releases The independent pdksh spawned mksh, which is the default shell used in Android (as it has a BSD license); mksh appears to be very much active. http://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm [https site has cert problems] OpenBSD also forked oksh from pdksh. This is certainly well-maintained. https://github.com/ibara/oksh

There are many unofficial efforts to bring OpenBSD software to other systems. For example, there are at least two maintained ports of OpenBSD ksh, https://github.com/dimkr/loksh (Linux) and https://github.com/ibara/oksh (cross-platform). There are also at least two of doas, https://github.com/slicer69/doas and https://github.com/nholstein/OpenDoas. I wish they were catalogued somewhere, like an "awesome list". I would love to see portable OpenBSD cron. Features like random ranges with steps (https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20230507122935) and `-s` (https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-7.2/crontab.5#s) put it ahead of almost every other. It could replace many uses of systemd timers on Linux. Edit: Added doas ports.

For those of us who like the openbsd ksh(all two of us) which is derived from pdksh. there is the project oksh. https://github.com/ibara/oksh I don't know if this is helpful or just annoying unsolicited "advice"

...and that ksh descended from pdksh, and is distributed as the oksh portable project here: https://github.com/ibara/oksh The MirBSD Korn Shell also descended from pdksh, and it can be found here: http://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm I don't know about the feature differences and code quality between these two; they both implement most of ksh88, and a small amount of ksh93. I prefer mksh when I need something more than a POSIX shell.

> However, the MirBSD Korn shell is one of the most lively shells for development activity, the latest release being in October of 2020. The OpenBSD Korn shell is actively developed and there is a portable version of it available. The latest version which reflects the shell as available in OpenBSD 6.9 was released 3 days ago. https://github.com/ibara/oksh

As an alternative, as mentioned already in response to another comment is oksh (https://github.com/ibara/oksh), a portable version of OpenBSD's pdksh. It's in the same Bourne shell lineage as bash but is lighter and the completion is simpler: you have to customise it if you want it to work for you, but it's very easy and quick to do.

Some of this could be down to the completions that are provided. A package such as bash-completions comes with completions for a lot of common software. One specific solution to your problem, well a suggestion is to use oksh (https://github.com/ibara/oksh) a portable version of pdksh (public domain Korn shell) that comes from OpenBSD. The reason why I recommend this shell is that it has programmable completion, although it is much simpler than what's provided by bash and that aside from the built in file name completion it won't come with anything else and you won't find (aside from people's dotfiles on Github) any packages that provide you with anything. Basically you have to customise it to your needs, but because the completion is so simple, whenever you find yourself in a situation where you'd want completion, spend a few minutes addi

"If anyone knows of a shell which meets my criteria of being lightweight but with command history and tab completion (paths, command names and command arguments), I'd really appreciate any suggestions. Otherwise I may have to look into extending dash or something." I would also love to know the answer to this question. I am a big fan of shells and shell programming in general and POSIX shell in particular. Only suggestion I currently have is ksh, of which there are a few implementations, ksh93 still developed (https://github.com/att/ast), pdksh from OpenBSD (of which there is a portable version here: https://github.com/ibara/oksh) and MirBSD ksh (https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm). Otherwise of interest is mrsh: https://github.com/emersion/mrsh which was recently mentioned by Drew DeVault in a blog post linked here: https://news.ycombinator