For me fish got three things I can't live without anymore:
1. Sane defaults. I just 'dnf/apt install fish' and be done with it. It's not a configuration mess, I don't need to manage dot files. You actually never have to touch config files. Things like aliases and functions can be saved from CLI. For the most part it works like bash.
2. Alt+H to open the manpage for command under the cursor, without messing with the command line. Best. Thing. Ever!!!
3. Extensive tab completions, which provide descriptions. Most of the time I don't have to open manpages and just do 'cmd -[TAB]'.
History access is also much better. Alt+Up/Down lets you inject tokenized history, like last command's arguments.
The only thing I frequently miss from bash is '<<<' and 'sudo !!'. The latter is a matter of habit, since fish provides Alt+S to toggle sudo prefixing.
I do most scripting in bash, but only because it's idiotic fun to mess with the arcane like that every once in a while. Did you know you can manage TCP I/O in pure bash, via /dev/tcp/$host/$port? Bash is soo stupid and dangerous, impossible to remember or understand the next day, but great fun.
I've been using Fish as my default shell for over a year now, and it's so pleasant.
I still write scripts and more complicated pipelines in Bash, which has made the switch easier.
For me fish got three things I can't live without anymore:
1. Sane defaults. I just 'dnf/apt install fish' and be done with it. It's not a configuration mess, I don't need to manage dot files. You actually never have to touch config files. Things like aliases and functions can be saved from CLI. For the most part it works like bash.
2. Alt+H to open the manpage for command under the cursor, without messing with the command line. Best. Thing. Ever!!!
3. Extensive tab completions, which provide descriptions. Most of the time I don't have to open manpages and just do 'cmd -[TAB]'.
History access is also much better. Alt+Up/Down lets you inject tokenized history, like last command's arguments.
The only thing I frequently miss from bash is '<<<' and 'sudo !!'. The latter is a matter of habit, since fish provides Alt+S to toggle sudo prefixing.
I do most scripting in bash, but only because it's idiotic fun to mess with the arcane like that every once in a while. Did you know you can manage TCP I/O in pure bash, via /dev/tcp/$host/$port? Bash is soo stupid and dangerous, impossible to remember or understand the next day, but great fun.
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My favorite.
Found Fish while looking for the ability to edit commands in a more text-editor style since I frequently need to edit LLM prompts.