Oils (Oil Shell)
Ranked 10 of 12 shells by recommenders
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.
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.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Compatible with bash and sh
“very interesting approach, it has a bash or sh compatible mode and another one with a more modern and cleaner syntax”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” “The lowest friction migration I see available while still offering a bunch of improvements.”
Comment from 23 May 2026 in “Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby” “it has an sh/bash compatible mode and thus provides an upgrade path away from bash”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” - Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “You should write an agent”
Modern syntax without POSIX mistakes
“very interesting approach, it has a bash or sh compatible mode and another one with a more modern and cleaner syntax”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Perl's decline was cultural” “In Oils, we have some pretty minor elaborations of the standard model, and it makes things a lot easier”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “Building a Shell” “don't repeat the mistakes of posix shell syntax”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway.” Strict mode prevents ambiguity
“OSH has shopt --set strict:all, which is "boring bash"”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Dependable C” “FWIW Oils has an option to prevent the ambiguity”
Comment from 29 Jun 2026 in “POSIX Is Not a Shell” Good idea for scripting
“Osh/ysh might be a good idea for scripting”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “The Missing Semester of Your CS Education” “is also a good idea today”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “The Missing Semester of Your CS Education”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
YSH still not fully defined
“they haven't fully defined what YSH is going to be yet”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby”
Other shells people recommend
The four most recommended other shells, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bash | 171 | 127 | 57% | 12 | 20 yrs7 owners | — |
| PowerShell | 156 | 92 | 63% | 12 | — | — |
| fish shell | 97 | 20 | 83% | 12 | 5 yrs11 owners | Approved |
| Nushell | 92 | 15 | 86% | 11 | 1.7 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| Oils (Oil Shell)This page | 7 | 2 | 78% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
All 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“don't repeat the mistakes of posix shell syntax”
“If fish or oil had existed back then, they would likely have won”
“That's why there's an industry of alternatives without the faults”
“FWIW Oils has an option to prevent the ambiguity”
“they haven't fully defined what YSH is going to be yet”
“when I tried it about 2 years ago, it felt awkward”
“The lowest friction migration I see available while still offering a bunch of improvements.”
“which are supposed to be better but in reality just end up being different”
“OSH is the most bash-compatible shell, and more POS”
“In Oils, we have some pretty minor elaborations of the standard model, and it makes things a lot easier”
“Osh/ysh might be a good idea for scripting”
“is also a good idea today”
“OSH has shopt --set strict:all, which is "boring bash"”
“it has an sh/bash compatible mode and thus provides an upgrade path away from bash”
“very interesting approach, it has a bash or sh compatible mode and another one with a more modern and cleaner syntax”
“We are down to 14 disagreements between OSH and busybox ash/bash on Alpine Linux main”
“OSH is the most bash-compatible shell, and it's also now Almquist shell compatible”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.