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Programming Language

Bourne Shell

Scripting Language

The Bourne shell is a command line interpreter and scripting language for Unix operating systems, developed by Stephen Bourne at Bell Labs beginning in 1976 and released as part of Version 7 Unix in 1979. It served both as the interactive shell users typed commands into and as a language for writing shell scripts, adding structured programming constructs such as loops and conditionals that earlier Unix shells lacked. It became the standard shell across Unix systems, and modern systems still keep /bin/sh available as the Bourne shell or a compatible replacement so that older scripts keep working. Its design, including conventions such as redirecting error output with 2>, became the basis of the POSIX sh standard and shaped later shells including the Korn shell and Bash. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
First Released
1979 1
Significance
The Bourne shell was once standard on all branded Unix systems. 2
Connections

In Field

Source Wikipedia: Bourne shell

Invented By

Source Wikidata: Bourne Shell
Sources
1. Wikidata: Bourne Shell
  • Wikidata Q844595, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)
  • Wikidata Q844595 P571 (inception)
  • Invented By: Stephen R. Bourne, Wikidata Q844595 P178 (developer) claim -> Q92774 (Stephen R. Bourne); computing atlas pioneer entity 280463, checked 2026-09-28
View the Source
2. Wikipedia: Bourne shell
  • Lead paragraph, sentence 2
    The Bourne shell was once standard on all branded Unix systems, although historically BSD-based systems had many scripts written in csh.
  • In Field: Operating Systems, Lead paragraph
View the Source
Unix shell (Wikipedia)
In Group: Unix Shell Languages, lead states the Bourne shell, sh, was the original Unix shell distributed with Version 7 UnixView the Source
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