Utility software in the context of Software application

Application software is software that is intended for end-user use – not operating, administering or programming a computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as application software. Application is a subjective classification that is often used to differentiate from system and utility software.

The abbreviation app became popular with the 2008 introduction of the iOS App Store, to refer to applications for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Later, with the release of the Mac App Store in 2010 and the Windows Store in 2011, it began to be used to refer to end-user software in general, regardless of platform.

A command-line interface (CLI), sometimes called a command-line shell, is a means of interacting with software via commands – each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternative to the non-interactive mode available with punched cards.

For nearly three decades, a CLI was the most common interface for software, but today a graphical user interface (GUI) is more common. Nonetheless, many programs such as operating system and software development utilities still provide CLI.

In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture's machine code instructions. Assembly language usually has one statement per machine code instruction (1:1), but constants, comments, assembler directives, symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers, and macros are generally also supported.

The first assembly code in which a language is used to represent machine code instructions is found in Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 work, Coding for A.R.C.. Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an assembler. The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, who, however, used the term to mean "a program that assembles another program consisting of several sections into a single program". The conversion process is referred to as assembly, as in assembling the source code. The computational step when an assembler is processing a program is called assembly time.

An archive file stores the content of one or more computer files, possibly compressed and/or encrypted, with associated metadata such as file name, directory structure, error detection and correction information, and commentary. An archive file is often used to facilitate portability, distribution and backup, and to reduce storage use. An archive file is usually generated and modified via a file archiver utility.

A console application or command-line program is a computer program (applications or utilities) designed to be used via a text-only user interface.

A console application can be used with a computer terminal, a system console, or a terminal emulator included with a graphical user interface (GUI) operating system, such as the Windows Console in Microsoft Windows, the Terminal in macOS, and xterm in the X Window System on Unix-like systems.