Shell (computing) in the context of Standard output

Unix (/ˈjuːnɪks/ , YOO-niks; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. Initially intended for use inside the Bell System, AT&T licensed Unix to outside parties in the late 1970s, leading to a variety of both academic and commercial Unix variants from vendors including University of California, Berkeley (BSD), Microsoft (Xenix), Sun Microsystems (SunOS/Solaris), HP/HPE (HP-UX), and IBM (AIX).

The early versions of Unix—which are retrospectively referred to as "Research Unix"—ran on computers such as the PDP-11 and VAX; Unix was commonly used on minicomputers and mainframes from the 1970s onwards. It distinguished itself from its predecessors as the first portable operating system: almost the entire operating system is written in the C programming language (in 1973), which allows Unix to operate on numerous platforms. Unix systems are characterized by a modular design that is sometimes called the "Unix philosophy". According to this philosophy, the operating system should provide a set of simple tools, each of which performs a limited, well-defined function. A unified and inode-based filesystem and an inter-process communication mechanism known as "pipes" serve as the main means of communication, and a shell scripting and command language (the Unix shell) is used to combine the tools to perform complex workflows.

This page lists notable software that can be classified as a compiler, a compiler generator, an interpreter, translator, a tool foundation, an assembler,an automatable command line interface (shell), or similar.

In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used for scripting.

Originally, scripting was limited to automating shells in operating systems, and languages were relatively simple. Today, scripting is more pervasive and some scripting languages include modern features that allow them to be used to develop application software also.

A "Unix shell" is a shell that provides a command-line user interface for a Unix-like operating system. A Unix shell provides a command language that can be used either interactively or for writing a shell script. A user typically works within a Unix shell via a terminal emulator; however, direct access via serial hardware connections or a Secure Shell are common for server systems. Although use of a Unix shell is popular with some users, others prefer to use a graphical shell in a windowing system, such as those provided in desktop Linux distributions or macOS, instead of a command-line interface (CLI).

A user may have access to multiple Unix shells with one configured to run by default when the user logs in interactively. The default selection is typically stored in a user's profile (for example, in the local passwd file or in a distributed configuration system such as NIS or LDAP). A user may use other shells nested inside the default shell.

KDE Plasma is a graphical shell developed by the KDE community for Unix-like operating systems. It serves as the interface layer between the user and the operating system, providing a graphical user interface (GUI) and workspace environment for launching applications, managing windows, and interacting with files and system settings. Plasma is designed to be modular and adaptable, with different variants tailored for specific device types, such as Plasma Desktop for personal computers, and Plasma Mobile for smartphones.

Plasma was first introduced in 2008 as part of KDE Software Compilation 4, as a major technical overhaul, combining traditional desktop functionality with a widget-based system designed for flexibility and visual consistency. With the KDE brand repositioning in 2009, the KDE software compilation was split into three distinct projects: KDE Plasma, KDE Frameworks and KDE Gear, allowing each to develop and release on independent schedules. As of the Plasma 6 series, feature updates are released every four months, with interim bugfix releases.

PowerShell is a shell program developed by Microsoft for task automation and configuration management. As is typical for a shell, it provides a command-line interpreter for interactive use and a script interpreter for automation via a language defined for it. Originally only for Windows, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-source and cross-platform on August 18, 2016, with the introduction of PowerShell Core. The former is built on the .NET Framework and the latter on .NET (previously .NET Core).

PowerShell is bundled with current versions of Windows and can be installed on macOS and Linux. Since Windows 10 build 14971, PowerShell replaced Command Prompt as the default command shell exposed by File Explorer.

Windows 1.0 is the first major release of Microsoft Windows, a family of graphical user shells and operating systems for personal computers developed by Microsoft. It was first released to manufacturing in the United States on November 20, 1985, while the European version was released as Windows 1.02 in May 1986.

Its development began after Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates saw a demonstration of a similar software suite, Visi On, at COMDEX in 1982. The operating environment was showcased to the public in November 1983, although it ended up being released two years later. Windows 1.0 runs on MS-DOS, as a 16-bit shell program known as MS-DOS Executive, and it provides an environment which can run graphical programs designed for Windows, as well as existing MS-DOS software. It included multitasking and the use of the mouse, and various built-in programs such as Calculator, Paint, and Notepad. The operating environment does not allow its windows to overlap, and instead, the windows are tiled. Windows 1.0 received four releases numbered 1.01 through 1.04, mainly adding support for newer hardware or additional languages.

AWK (/ɔːk/) is a scripting language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and it is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The shell command that runs the AWK processor is named awk.

The AWK language is a data-driven scripting language consisting of a set of actions to be taken against streams of textual data – either run directly on files or used as part of a pipeline – for purposes of extracting or transforming text, such as producing formatted reports. The language extensively uses the string datatype, associative arrays (that is, arrays indexed by key strings), and regular expressions. While AWK has a limited intended application domain and was especially designed to support one-liner programs, the language is Turing-complete, and even the early Bell Labs users of AWK often wrote well-structured large AWK programs.

cat is a shell command for writing the content of a file or input stream to standard output. The name is an abbreviation of catenate, a variant form of concatenate. Originally developed for Unix, it is available on many operating systems and shells today.

In addition to combining files, cat is commonly used to copy files and in particular to copy a file to the terminal monitor. Unless redirected, cat outputs file content on-screen.