Command-line interpreter

The terms command-line interpreter, command line shell, command language interpreter, or identical abbreviation CLI, are applied to computer programs designed to interpret a sequence of lines of text which may be entered by a user, read from a file or another kind of data stream.

Description

The context of interpretation is usually one of a given operating system or programming language.

Command-line interpreters allow users to issue various commands in a very efficient (and often terse) way.

This requires the user to know the names of the commands and their parameters, and the syntax of the language that is interpreted.

See also

• Unix shell
• Shell (computing)

External links

• Command-line interface @ Wikipedia