Difference between shell and bash scripts

[EchoOnFedora]

Whats the difference, and when do you use which?

[JohnGraham]

There's not really a difference - a "bash script" is a type of "shell script", since bash is a type of shell. Normally, the names are synonymous with each other.

[sarlacii]

Yeh, it's really an argument about semantics... in general you should use "shell script" when talking about command-line scripts, since this does not reference a particular shell. However, the Bash shell is so commonly used as the default shell in most systems, that people have come to use "Bash script" colloquially.

But... there are still many folk out there who will have a particular preference for korn, tcsh, csh or zsh etc. It's also worth noting that Perl and Python have taken over a lot of the heavy-lifting that used to be accomplished using shell scripts. The readability is better, as is the portability.

Have fun.