			     What is ash?

Ash is a reimplementation of the System V shell.  Currently it has
most features of that shell, plus some additions.  The file ash.1
contains the manual entry for ash.  The file DIFFERENCES lists known
differences between ash and the standard shell.  The file TOUR provides
some documentation of the internals.  Manual pages for some builtin
commands are in the bltin subdirectory.

Ash is copyrighted but there are few restrictions on what you can do
with it.  Read the file LICENSE, which gives the details and explains
about the lack of a warrantee.


			      Compiling

1)  Type "sh config" and answer the questions.  This will create shell.h.
    In case you have problems with this, three versions are provided with
    distribution:
	shell.h.bsd	for 4.2/4.3 BSD
	shell.h.s5r3	for System V release 3
	shell.h.s5r2	for System III and System V release 1 and 2
    For a Version 7 system, try using shell.h.s5r2 with SYSV undefined.

2)  Type "make".  You may want to add DEBUG=-O to the make commands to
    turn on optimization.  Also, use gcc rather than cc if you have it
    (but remember that ANSI compilers like gcc won't work with the BSD
    header files as distributed by Berkeley; if you use the unmodified
    header files with gcc, job control won't work.)  If you don't have
    an ANSI C compiler, you will get a lot of messages about illegal
    pointer combinations; ignore them.  You can also ignore messages
    from the loader telling you to run ranlib.

3)  Install the commands where ever you feel like.  Besides ash, there
    are several commands in the bltin directory:  catf, expr, echo, line,
    nlecho test, [, and umask.  These are stand alone versions of builtin
    commands.  Finally, the directory funcs contains shell functions.
    Install these in a suitable directory and include them in your
    path (e. g. PATH=$PATH:$HOME/ash/funcs%func).

If you are adventurous, you can compile with MALLOC=mymalloc.o, which
will get you a version of malloc that uses a first fit allocation scheme.
It may make more efficient use of memory than the standard version of
malloc on your system.  The code was written for a VAX and is somewhat
machine dependent.
