ksh93
AT&T Software Technology toolkit providing UNIX tools, libraries, and enhanced POSIX replacements including KSH shells.
What is ksh93?
AST (AT&T Software Technology) is a comprehensive toolkit from AT&T Research that provides enhanced UNIX tools, libraries, and replacements for standard POSIX utilities. It solves the problem of inconsistent or inefficient system tools by offering portable, optimized alternatives that work across multiple platforms including various UNIX systems and Windows via UWIN.
System administrators, developers working with shell scripting, and engineers needing portable UNIX tools across different operating systems, particularly those maintaining legacy systems or requiring KornShell compatibility.
Developers choose AST for its collection of proven, efficient tools from AT&T Research, its cross-platform portability, and its enhanced versions of standard utilities that offer better performance and reliability than many default system tools.
Overview
AST - AT&T Software Technology
Use Cases
Best For
- Replacing standard POSIX tools with more efficient alternatives
- Cross-platform shell scripting with KornShell compatibility
- System administration tasks requiring portable UNIX utilities
- Maintaining legacy systems with consistent tooling across platforms
- Developing applications that need to run on both UNIX and Windows systems
- Building software with the NMAKE build system
Not Ideal For
- Teams requiring actively maintained and updated software, as the last stable release was in 2012 and it's not actively maintained per the README.
- Modern development environments that rely on easy package manager installations (e.g., apt, brew), since AST uses a custom NMAKE build system and complex setup.
- Projects needing seamless integration with contemporary DevOps or cloud-native toolchains, due to AST's legacy focus and potential compatibility gaps.
- Small-scale scripts or tasks where standard system tools are sufficient, to avoid the overhead of building and learning the entire toolkit.
Pros & Cons
Pros
AST provides more efficient versions of standard UNIX utilities, offering performance improvements over default tools as highlighted in the README.
Designed to run on various UNIX systems and Microsoft Windows via the UWIN compatibility layer, making it valuable for heterogeneous environments.
Includes ksh93u+ and ksh93v- versions, which are stable releases from AT&T authors, ensuring consistent shell scripting across platforms.
Almost all tools have built-in manual access through --man or --html flags, reducing reliance on external documentation as noted in the README.
Cons
The master branch ksh93u+ was last released in 2012 and is not actively maintained, risking security vulnerabilities and missing modern features.
Uses NMAKE and a custom package script for building, which is more cumbersome than standard configure/make or package manager installations.
With no active development, community support is sparse, and users may need to rely on forks or external resources for updates and help.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
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ionMirror of https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/ion
ngsNext Generation Shell (NGS)
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