Korn Shell vs Bash

Updated April 20, 2023

Difference Between Korn Shell vs Bash

KRS stands for the Korn shell. Korn shell was developed by David Korn many more years before the Bash shell. It merges all the features of shells like Bourne shell, C shell, etc. As the Korn shell is much older than the Bash shell, it has comparatively lesser resources and a limited number of users. There are various versions of the Korn shell released till now like ksh88, ksh93, etc in order to compensate for the limitations of the older Korn shell. Since it contains various features like associative arrays, dealing with loops, print command, etc, it is still used widely especially by the old Linux/ Unix lovers.

Bash stands for Bourne Again Shell. It was created by Freeware Software Foundation and was released under the license of GNU. It is open source and is available free for the general public. It also echoes some important features of the most popular Bourne shell with some extra features. As it is recent and is one of the most popular among Linux lovers. It has some special features like tab completion, emacs key binding, and the easiest way of setting the prompt for the user in order to display the current directory, etc which makes it more powerful than other shells.

Head to Head Comparison between Korn Shell vs Bash (Infographics)

Below are the top 10 differences between Korn Shell vs Bash:

Key Differences between Korn Shell vs Bash

Some of the key differences between Korn shell and Bash are given below:

1. Korn shell has a very amazing command, which is the ‘r history’ command that allows the user to quickly return the older commands whereas this facility is not available in the Bash shell.
2. Bash stands for Bourne Again Shell which is a clone of Bourne shell. It is licensed under GNU so it is open source and is available for free for the general public whereas KSH stands for Korn shell which was developed by David Korn which merges the features of many shells like Bourne shell, C shell, TC shell, etc.
3. The facility of Associative arrays is provided by Korn shell which is very useful for the programmer while programming in the shell scripts whereas Bash does not allow Associative arrays.
4. Bash allows the easiest way to display the current directory by setting the prompt whereas the same process is very lengthy as well as tricky in the Korn shell.
5. It is quite easy to exit codes from in the pipes and that too in a cleaner way in the Bash shell whereas the same task is a bit difficult for the programmer in the Korn shell.
6. Tab completion and emacs key binding are some of the most important yet new features which are quite helpful for the programmer while working with the Bash shell whereas such features are not available in the Korn shell.
7. When dealing with the execution of commands and the scripting files, the performance of korn shell is comparatively faster than that of the bash shell which performs the same task but with more time.
8. Bash shell is new in the market and is provided as the default shell in the Operating Systems, it is much more popular and gained a lot of public support in comparison to the Korn shell which is older than that.
9. Bash shell has comparatively more resources and is available free publicly so it is used largely by the open source communities whereas Korn shell is also popular but since it is old so lacks some new features and resources to be used by the community.
10. Bash is considered to be standard for Linux. and according to the experience of many people, it is easier to find help in bash as compared to Korn shell.
11. Bash can be considered as an extension of the korn shell as it includes almost all the features of it added with some new extra features.

Korn Shell vs Bash Comparison Table

Let us look at the comparison table of Korn Shell vs Bash.

The korn and bash shells are the combinations of the features of the most common shells, i.e. Bourne Shell. So both the shells can be used interchangeably and can be replaced according to the programmer-specific requirements. Below given is the comparison table showing the head to head comparison between Korn shell and Bash:

Korn Shell	Bash
Script extension in Korn is .ksh	Script extension in Bash is .sh
Korn shell provides much better performance than Bash shell when dealing with the execution of scripts and commands.	Bash shell provides decent performance when it comes to executing commands and scripts.
Korn shell interpreter is located at /bin/ksh.	Bash shell interpreter is located at /bin/bash.
Korn shell provides much more programming features and is superior in comparison to the Bash shell.	Although Bash shell provides a lot of programming features, it is inferior to Korn shell.
Binary size of the Korn interpreter is 1.6 MB.	Binary size of Bash interpreter is 1.1 MB
Korn shell uses the print command to print the output which is somehow better than echo in Bash	Bash shell uses the echo command to print the output.
When it comes to handling loops, Korn shell is much better than the Bash shell.	Bash shell handles loops nicely but not upto the mark of Korn shell.
Korn shell is older so it has fewer resources in comparison to the Bash shell.	Bash shell is new and has many new resources and is more popular in public as compared to Korn shell.
In Korn shell, scripts are less readable as they have older syntax.	Scripts are more readable and understandable as compared to Korn shell because of the newer syntax.
Korn shell has comparatively fewer public followers in comparison to the Bash shell	Bash shell has large community followers as it is new and open-source, so available for free to the public.

Conclusion

The above description clearly explains what the Korn shell and Bash are and the major differences between the two. Both are decent shells and function as interactive command interpreters. Both share almost the common features so these can be used interchangeably. Both the shells are standard shells, so it depends on the choice and need of the programmer to use them according to the requirements.

Recommended Articles

This is a guide to Korn Shell vs Bash. Here we also discuss the Korn Shell vs Bash key differences with infographics and comparison table. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –

1. Zsh vs Bash
2. Tableau Competitors
3. Big Data Technologies
4. Careers in SQL