While agree with the majority of the responses
this far, I can't resist pointing out that the
csh-whynot FAQ is a firm condemnation for csh
*programming*. I know plenty of old-timers that
still prefer csh as their interactive shell. It's
not clear from the base post if the engineer in
question is writing shell scripts.
I came to UNIX later if life and started
straightaway with ksh, not because I had heard
that csh was inherently evil, but because it
lacked command line editing (readline-style
command line editing). However, old (bad) habits
die hard. Vi is the shining example. Again,
coming to UNIX somewhat later in life I had to
laugh at vi and went straight to emacs (with
custom bindings so it behaved like editors I was
used to).
Bottom line is that engineers can certainly get
set in their ways despite things that offer
obvious productivity improvements such as csh ->
, vi -> vim or emacs. The
whack with a 2x4 approach, while satisfying in the
short term, seldom is the best method to move
these folks. They are stubborn enough, and usually
sophisticated enough to KNOW that csh is bad and
they should move... But a shell, like an editor,
is a pretty large comfort zone/acquired taste and
hard to move from. It's just a matter of their
current priorities. Usually it's seeing how other
tools/approaches offer large productivity boosts
that gets them to move. Peer pressure works best
here.
So I'm guessing that this engineer is an older
gentleman/gentlewoman who's been around UNIX for a
while (although I agree that that doesn't quite
fit the profile since the average csh user knows
this trick and has read the whynot FAQ). IOW, this
is not some young Turk who has capriciously
latched on to csh. So instead of the 2x4, just
wish him luck. Make it clear that this is the tip
of the iceberg so he's going to need it. And if
he's the never read the whynot FAQ, you should be
tattooing it on his forehead. It's his first step
toward a long recovery ;-)
