# Oils (Oil Shell)

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Oils (Oil Shell) and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Bash-compatible shell with a cleaner, more modern YSH syntax, offering an upgrade path away from bash and sh. Caveat: YSH is not fully defined yet.

## Why people recommend it

- Compatible with bash and sh (4 comments): "very interesting approach, it has a bash or sh compatible mode and another one with a more modern and cleaner syntax" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184820)) "The lowest friction migration I see available while still offering a bunch of improvements." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248706)) "it has an sh/bash compatible mode and thus provides an upgrade path away from bash" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46185194))
- Modern syntax without POSIX mistakes (3 comments): "very interesting approach, it has a bash or sh compatible mode and another one with a more modern and cleaner syntax" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184820)) "In Oils, we have some pretty minor elaborations of the standard model, and it makes things a lot easier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47414723)) "don't repeat the mistakes of posix shell syntax" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49058071))
- Strict mode prevents ambiguity (2 comments): "OSH has shopt --set strict:all, which is "boring bash"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46214972)) "FWIW Oils has an option to prevent the ambiguity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48715624))
- Good idea for scripting (2 comments): "Osh/ysh might be a good idea for scripting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143466)) "is also a good idea today" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143402))

## What people warn about

- YSH still not fully defined (1 comments): "they haven't fully defined what YSH is going to be yet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269594))

## 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, "Oils (Oil Shell)", https://hackerapproved.com/p/oils/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).