The Bourne shell (sh) is a Unix shell that was developed by Steve Bourne in the late 1970s. It is a command-line interpreter that allows users to type commands to perform tasks on a Unix-based system. The Bourne shell is the default shell on many Unix and Linux systems and is still widely used today.
The Bourne shell is known for its simplicity and ease of use. It provides a number of built-in commands for navigating the file system, running programs, and performing basic system tasks. It also includes features such as command history, command line editing, and variables.
In addition to its interactive use, the Bourne shell is also commonly used as a scripting language for automating tasks. A script is a text file that contains a series of commands that can be executed in sequence by the Bourne shell.
Although the Bourne shell has been largely superseded by newer shells such as the Korn shell (ksh) and the Bourne Again shell (bash), it is still widely used and supported on many Unix and Linux systems.