sh vs Free Pascal
When comparing sh vs Free Pascal, the Slant community recommends Free Pascal for most people. In the question“What is the easiest programming language to learn for a non-programmer (actually used for production)?” Free Pascal is ranked 10th while sh is ranked 19th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Truely the most broadly available shell
It may not be the best if you want power, but if you want to write a POSIX script that will run everywhere, it's a pretty good choice.
Pro Most influential Unix shell alongside csh
Bourne shell introduced features such as piping, here documents, command substitution, variables, control structures for condition-testing and looping and filename wildcarding.
Pro Easy to learn
Pro Fast compiler
Very fast, even big programs compile very quickly.
Pro Cross platform
Many target platforms and architectures.
Pro Powerful
Close to metal while being high level, performance to match C/C++
Cons
Con Not suitable for interactive use
The Bourne shell has always been criticized (most notably by Bill Joy, author of csh) as being unfriendly for interactive use.
It has no tilde (~) expansion. Limited file test operators. Limited math operators.