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. 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.
The unix /# and OS/2 EXTPROC commands facilitate the passing of batch files to external processors. One can use this to write specific command processors for dedicated uses, and process external data files which reside in batch files.
Many graphical interfaces, such as the OS/2 Presentation Manager and early versions of Microsoft Windows use command-lines to call helper programs to open documents and programs. The commands are stored in the graphical shell or in files like the registry or the OS/2 os2user.ini file.
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Famous quotes containing the word interpreter:
“Man, being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)