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You started out strong but fumbled in your second sentence. > CLI means you can pipe the output of your program to things like sed and grep and any other progr
by pwdisswordfishy 7mo ago
You started out strong but fumbled in your second sentence.
> CLI means you can pipe the output of your program to things like sed and grep and any other program.
No, that's not a prereq for a CLI. "CLI" means "command-line interface", that's it. Vim's command line is still a command line even though it's totally disjoint from the UNIX shell and the entire process model. Even primarily graphical apps can expose a command line in the UI. Think of the VSCode command palette, for example, copied from SublimeText.
(Though all the examples cited here are editors, there's no reason for it to be restricted to that. Indeed, even more graphical apps should sport command lines inside them.)
- IgorPartola 7mo agoHeh fair enough. I conflated the UNIX shell and command line as a general concept.
- outofpaper 7mo agoIf anything a CLU, a Command Line Utility would be the best thing to call the small programs that both van be run as one offs from the command line and have their output piped to other Command Line Utilities... I don't know why the term isn't being used more. CLU keep it simple. CLIs are a catch all from every single CLU up to MidnightCommander, Zork, Mosh, and OpenCode.
- pwdisswordfishy 7mo ago> CLIs are a catch all from every single CLU up to MidnightCommander No they're not, for reason just explained. CLI means "command-line interface". Midnight Commander runs in a terminal emulator, but it's not a CLI.