In computing, a command-line interpreter, or command language interpreter, is a blanket term for a certain class of programs designed to read lines of text entered by a user, thus implementing a command-line interface.

Operating system shells

AmigaOS

* Amiga CLI/Amiga Shell

Unix-like systems

There are many variants of

Unix shell A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting language, and is used by the operating system t ...

: * Bourne shell sh ** Almquist shell (ash) *** Debian Almquist shell (dash) ** Bash (Unix shell) bash ** KornShell ksh *** Z shell zsh * C shell csh ** TENEX C shell tcsh * Ch shell ch *

Emacs Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, ...

shell eshell *

Friendly interactive shell fish is a Unix shell with a focus on interactivity and usability. Fish is designed to give the user features by default, rather than by configuration. Fish is considered an exotic shell since it does not rigorously adhere to POSIX shell stand ...

fish * PowerShell pwsh * rc shell rc, a shell for Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Unix * Stand-alone shell sash * Scheme Shell scsh

Microsoft Windows

Native

* COMMAND.COM, the original Microsoft command line processor introduced on

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

as well as Windows 9x, in 32-bit versions of NT-based Windows via

NTVDM Virtual DOS machines (VDM) refer to a technology that allows running 16-bit/32-bit DOS and 16-bit Windows programs when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware. Overview Virtual DOS machines can operate ei ...

* cmd.exe, successor of COMMAND.COM introduced on OS/2 and Windows NT systems, although COMMAND.COM is still available in virtual DOS machines on IA-32 versions of those operating systems as well. * Recovery Console *

Windows PowerShell PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-s ...

, a command processor based on

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

** PowerShell, a command processor based on

.NET Core The domain name net is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used in the Domain Name System of the Internet. The name is derived from the word ''network'', indicating it was originally intended for organizations involved in networking technologies ...

* Hamilton C shell, a

clone Clone or Clones or Cloning or Cloned or The Clone may refer to: Places * Clones, County Fermanagh * Clones, County Monaghan, a town in Ireland Biology * Clone (B-cell), a lymphocyte clone, the massive presence of which may indicate a pathologi ...

of the Unix C shell by Hamilton Laboratories * 4NT, a clone of CMD.EXE with additional features by JP Software * Take Command, a newer incarnation of 4NT

Unix/Linux compatibility layer and POSIX subsystem

* Interix * MKS Toolkit * Microsoft POSIX subsystem * Windows Services for UNIX * Windows Subsystem for Linux

CP/M

Console Command Processor CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initia ...

(CCP), the default command line interpreter * ZCPR for the Z-System * Microshell

DOS

* COMMAND.COM, the default command-line interpreter *

4DOS 4DOS is a command-line interpreter by JP Software, designed to replace the default command interpreter COMMAND.COM in Microsoft DOS and Windows. It was written by Rex C. Conn and Tom Rawson and first released in 1989. Compared to the default ...

, a compatible, but more advanced shell by JP Software * NDOS, provided with some versions of the Norton Utilities *

GW-BASIC GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA. Functionally identical to BASICA, its BASIC interpreter is a fully self-contained executable and does not need the Cassette BASIC ROM found in the ori ...

OS/2

* CMD.EXE, the default command-line interpreter * Hamilton C shell, a

of the Unix C shell by Hamilton Laboratories * 4OS2, a clone of CMD.EXE with additional features by JP Software

IBM i

* Control Language *

Qshell Qshell is an optional command-line interpreter (shell (computing), shell) for the IBM i, IBM i operating system. Qshell is based on POSIX and X/Open standards. It is a Bourne shell, Bourne-like shell that also includes features of KornShell. The u ...

Apple computers

Apple DOS Apple DOS is the family of disk operating systems for the Apple II series of microcomputers from late 1978 through early 1983. It was superseded by ProDOS in 1983. Apple DOS has three major releases: DOS 3.1, DOS 3.2, and DOS 3.3; each one of ...

/ Apple ProDOS * Macintosh Programmer's Workshop

Mobile devices

DROS Dros is a surname. Notable people with this surname include: * Charles du Dros (fl.1544), French governor of Mondovì * Cristian Dros (born 1998), Moldovan footballer * Gerald Dros (born 1973), South African cricketer * Imme Dros (born 1936), Dut ...

, Java ME platform based DOS-like shell for smartphones

Network routers

* Cisco IOS *

Junos Junos OS (also known as Juniper Junos, Junos and JUNOS) is a FreeBSD-based network operating system used in Juniper Networks routing, switching and security devices. Versioning Junos OS was first made available on 7 July 1998, with new feature ...

Command Line Interface (Juniper Networks)

Minicomputer CLIs

* Data General's CLI (Command Line Interpreter) on RDOS and AOS Operating Systems and their variants *

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unti ...

's DIGITAL Command Language (DCL)

Other

* BASIC-PLUS (RSTS/E) * CANDE MCS – command-line shell and text editor on the MCP operating system * Conversational Monitor System (VM/CMS) *

DOS Wedge The DOS Wedge is a piece of Commodore 64 system software that was popular in its time. It was written by Bob Fairbairn, and was included by Commodore (CBM) on the 1541 disk drive Test/Demo Disk (filename: "DOS 5.1") and also packaged with the C ...

(an extension to the Commodore 64's BASIC 2.0) * DIGITAL Command Language (OpenVMS) *

Extensible Firmware Interface UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a set of specifications written by the UEFI Forum. They define the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples ...

shell *

Microsoft BASIC Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first ...

(qualifies both for a programming language and OS) * Singularity (operating system) * SymShell, see SymbOS * Time Sharing Option (MVS, z/OS) * Atari TOS shell * YouOS shell * EFI-SHELL – an open source

command shell

Programming

Language systems

APL (programming language) APL (named after the book ''A Programming Language'') is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the multidimensional array. It uses a large range of special graphic symbols to represent mo ...

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

– actually, many dialects and varieties of a programming language may have commands like ''kill, system, files'', and others which allow operating system access from the interactive and often from programme mode * BeanShell, a shell for Java *

F Sharp (programming language) F# (pronounced F sharp) is a functional-first, general purpose, strongly typed, multi-paradigm programming language that encompasses functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming methods. It is most often used as a cross-platform ...

, F# * J (programming language) *

Haskell (programming language) Haskell () is a general-purpose, statically-typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research and industrial applications, Haskell has pioneered a number of programming la ...

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lispi ...

** Common Lisp Interface Manager * Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, an old command-line environment used for software development on the classic Mac OS *

Prolog Prolog is a logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is intended primarily a ...

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by ...

* Scala (programming language) * Standard ML

Debuggers

* DEBUG * gdb * DDT, a PDP-10 debugger from DEC used as a command shell for the MIT Incompatible Timesharing System * Firebug/Chromebug, a JavaScript shell and debugging environment as a Firefox plugin

Scientific and engineering software

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementa ...

* Wolfram Mathematica *

ROOT In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

Programming languages

* BeanShell – shell for Java *

JavaScript shell JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, often ...

– several programs by this name allow interactive JavaScriptdeveloper.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript_shells
Comparison of Server-side JavaScript solutions ** Javascript Interpreter Shell * Julia *

Jython Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language designed to run on the Java platform. The implementation was formerly known as JPython until 1999. Overview Jython programs can import and use any Java class. Except for some stand ...

Perl Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...

* PHPsh – shell for

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

* Python ** IPython * REXX *

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapp ...

** Interactive Ruby Shell * Tcl ** Tclsh ** Wish (Windowing Shell) * tkcon shell and IDE for Tcl/Tk * Windows Script Host

Database queries

sqsh Sqsh (pronounced {{not a typo, ''skwish''), short for SQSHell (pronounced s-q-shell), is an Free and open-source software, Free and open-source substitute for isql, the interactive SQL Client (computing), client supplied with Sybase's Adaptive Se ...

, a shell available with some SQL implementations for database queries and other tasks. * Google Shell, a browser-based front-end for Google Search

References

{{Reflist

Command-line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive command (computing), commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invokin ...

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