# Elvish shell

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Elvish shell and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free shell with good support for structured data and JSON, and people recommend it as a better alternative to Bash.

## Why people recommend it

- Good JSON and data structure support (2 comments): "it has support for more advanced data structures and also integrates json well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248895)) "focus on the ease of accessing values from the json data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854639))
- Seen as better than Bash (2 comments): "That's why there's an industry of alternatives without the faults" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056996)) "there are plenty of better shells than Bash" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50045064))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Bash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bash.md): 171 recommend
- [PowerShell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/powershell.md): 156 recommend
- [fish shell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fish-shell.md): 97 recommend
- [Nushell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nushell.md): 92 recommend
- [zsh](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zsh.md): 52 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Elvish shell", https://hackerapproved.com/p/elvish/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).