When comparing NuShell vs DASH, the Slant community recommends DASH for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX shells?” DASH is ranked 8th while NuShell is ranked 11th. The most important reason people chose DASH is:
Dash has a very fast startup, this happens because the shell is started a lot of times during boot and dash minimizes the work it does during this process.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Sort and Filter
You can sort and filter output.
Pro Math from Shell
You can do math straight from your shell.
Pro Structured Data as Output
NuShell assumes the output should be a structured data from the beginning. It outputs as tables. That helps you to filter, sort and search the output quite easily.
Pro Fast startup
Dash has a very fast startup, this happens because the shell is started a lot of times during boot and dash minimizes the work it does during this process.
Pro Low memory usage, which matters a lot in embedded
It is designed to be very lightweight and has no support for shell specific extensions that are not POSIX.
Pro Default shell on Debian systems
DASH is the default shell for Debian based systems due to it speed, full POSIX compliance and low overhead.
Pro Full POSIX support
It's fully POSIX compatible, so if your script runs on dash it will probably run on all other shells.
Pro A perfect clone
It's a clone of the original System V4 Bourne shell.
Cons
Con Still Early in Development
NuShell is still young and has a long way to go.
Con No "export"
You cannot set temporary variables in NuShell. It uses a "config" system to permanently store variable in a config file.
Con Doesn't support all bash features
Dash does not support all bash features, sometimes called 'bashisms' unless explicitly pointed at /bin/sh
.