Home > Command line interface

Programs that implement these interfaces are often called command line interpreters. Examples of such programs include the various different Unix shells, VMS' DCL (Digital Command Language), and related designs like CP/M and DOS's command.com, both based heavily on DEC's RSX and RSTS operating system interfaces (which were also command line interfaces). MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation , headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, is the world's largest software company (with over 50,000 employees in various countries, as of May 2004). Microsoft develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of software claims their next major operating system, code-named LonghornLonghorn is Microsoft's code name for the next version of its Windows operating system, to follow on from Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. It was originally expected to ship sometime early in 2006 as a minor step between Whistler and Blackcomb (Lon, will include an enhanced command line interface named MSHMSH aka Microsoft Shell is a command line interface and scripting language being developed by Microsoft as part of their next operating system, codenamed Windows Longhorn. It is similar in usage to the more advanced Unix shells, but, like most of Longhorn (Microsoft Shell, codename Monad), which combines the features of traditional Unix shells with the object-oriented .NET frameworkNET (note capitalization) initiative is a Microsoft project to create a new software development platform focused on network transparency, platform independence, and rapid application development. The strategy . NET is Microsoft's strategic initiative for.

There are other programs which use CLIs as well. The CAD program AutoCADAutoCAD is a computer assisted design ( CAD) software package for 2D and 3D design and drafting, developed and sold by Autodesk. It currently runs only on Microsoft operating systems. Versions for Unix and Apple Macintosh were released, but these met with is a prominent example. In some computing environments like the OberonOberon is an operating system, originally developed as part of the NS32032-based Ceres workstation project; it is written entirely in the Oberon programming language. The entire system was designed and implemented by a team at ETH Zurich including Niklaus or SmalltalkSmalltalk is a dynamically typed object oriented programming language designed at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, Adele Goldberg, and others during the 1970s. The language was generally released as Smalltalk-80 and has been widely used s user interface, most of the text which appears on the screen may be used for giving commands.

The commands given on a command line interface are often of the form

or

doSomething corresponds to a verbA verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action ("bring", "read"), occurrence ("to decompose" (itself), "to glitter"), or a state of being ("exist", "live", "soak", "stand"). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many fact, how to an adverb (it describes how the command should be performed in this instance - for example, should it be particularly "verbose", or particularly "quiet") and toAFile to an object (often one or more files) against which the command should be run. The standalone '>' in the second example is a redirection character, telling the operating system (i.e., usually a command shell interpreter) to send the output of the previous commands (that is, those on the left of '>') to some other place (that is, the file named to the right of the '>'). Another common and important redirection character is the pipe ('|'), which tells the CLI to treat the output of this command as the input of another; this can be a very powerful mechanism for the user, as explained under Pipe (Unix) and Pipes and filters.