Bash vs. FastScript vs. PowerShell vs. openIndiana Comparison Chart

Bash is a free software Unix shell and command language. It has become the default login shell for most Linux distributions. In addition to being available on Linux systems, a version of Bash is also available for Windows through the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Bash is the default user shell in Solaris 11 and was the default shell in Apple macOS from version 10.3 until the release of macOS Catalina, which changed the default shell to zsh. Despite this change, Bash remains available as an alternative shell on macOS systems. As a command processor, Bash allows users to enter commands in a text window that are then executed by the system. Bash can also read and execute commands from a file, known as a shell script. It supports a number of features commonly found in Unix shells, including wildcard matching, piping, here documents, command substitution, variables, and control structures for condition testing and iteration. Bash is compliant with the POSIX shell standards.

PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation and configuration management framework, consisting of a command-line shell and scripting language. Unlike most shells, which accept and return text, PowerShell is built on top of the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR), and accepts and returns .NET objects. This fundamental change brings entirely new tools and methods for automation. Unlike traditional command-line interfaces, PowerShell cmdlets are designed to deal with objects. An object is structured information that is more than just the string of characters appearing on the screen. Command output always carries extra information that you can use if you need it. If you've used text-processing tools to process data in the past, you'll find that they behave differently when used in PowerShell. In most cases, you don't need text-processing tools to extract specific information. You directly access portions of the data using standard PowerShell object syntax.