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They are all terminal emulators. You have probably, as one who has never used the command line, never touched an actual terminal.
by JdeBP 1y ago
They are all terminal emulators. You have probably, as one who has never used the command line, never touched an actual terminal.
- fluoridation 1y agoA shell is not a terminal emulator. It's a program that does text I/O (perhaps with a terminal, perhaps not) and implements basic system functionality like executing programs and often scripting.
- MangoToupe 1y agoMost people interact with a shell through a terminal emulator, though. The alternative is something like emacs's eshell. Or an actual "terminal" which hasn't been even available for purchase for many decades.
- fluoridation 1y agoNot always. The shell may be facing a serial interface, or it could be spawned by a program and have no user interface at all.
- MangoToupe 1y agoI probably wouldn't describe either as a human interacting with a shell, but nevertheless point taken.
- fluoridation 1y agoI wouldn't either, which I why I didn't include that interaction in the definition I gave. A shell just implements basic system functionality, it doesn't necessarily function as a UI.