2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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shell
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. [orig. Multics techspeak, widely propagated via Unix] 1. [techspeak] The
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command interpreter used to pass commands to an operating system; so called
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because it is the part of the operating system that interfaces with the
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outside world. 2. More generally, any interface program that mediates access
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to a special resource or server for convenience, efficiency, or security
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reasons; for this meaning, the usage is usually a shell around whatever.
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This sort of program is also called a wrapper. 3. A skeleton program,
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created by hand or by another program (like, say, a parser generator), which
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provides the necessary incantation s to set up some task and the control
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flow to drive it (the term driver is sometimes used synonymously). The user
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is meant to fill in whatever code is needed to get real work done. This
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usage is common in the AI and Microsoft Windows worlds, and confuses Unix
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hackers. Historical note: Apparently, the original Multics shell (sense 1)
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was so called because it was a shell (sense 3); it ran user programs not by
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starting up separate processes, but by dynamically linking the programs into
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its own code, calling them as subroutines, and then dynamically de-linking
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them on return. The VMS command interpreter still does something very like
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this.
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