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<h1 class="section">What is Bash?</h1> <p>Bash is the shell, or command language interpreter, for the <small>GNU</small> operating system. The name is an acronym for the ‘<samp>Bourne-Again SHell</samp>’, a pun on Stephen Bourne, the author of the direct ancestor of the current Unix shell <code>sh</code>, which appeared in the Seventh Edition Bell Labs Research version of Unix. </p> <p>Bash is largely compatible with <code>sh</code> and incorporates useful features from the Korn shell <code>ksh</code> and the C shell <code>csh</code>. It is intended to be a conformant implementation of the <small>IEEE</small> <small>POSIX</small> Shell and Tools portion of the <small>IEEE</small> <small>POSIX</small> specification (<small>IEEE</small> Standard 1003.1). It offers functional improvements over <code>sh</code> for both interactive and programming use. </p> <p>While the <small>GNU</small> operating system provides other shells, including a version of <code>csh</code>, Bash is the default shell. Like other <small>GNU</small> software, Bash is quite portable. It currently runs on nearly every version of Unix and a few other operating systems - independently-supported ports exist for <small>MS-DOS</small>, <small>OS/2</small>, and Windows platforms. </p><div class="_attribution">
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