Ask HN: Why is it called a shell?
Would anyone like to offer how or why the command line interpreter came to be known as a shell?
1 comments
Came from Unix. A "shell to the kernel" that only exposed the outer layer.
Have a source?
Not really, the internet points to this doc: http://www.multicians.org/shell.html Where Louis Pouzin of Multics claims to have coined it.
Ken Thompson describes it here http://v6shell.org/history/unix/unix.pdf
Looking around, this seems more interesting (implying it is a metaphorical name of a prophet's shell listening): http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/14934/why-was-the-wo...
Ken Thompson describes it here http://v6shell.org/history/unix/unix.pdf
Looking around, this seems more interesting (implying it is a metaphorical name of a prophet's shell listening): http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/14934/why-was-the-wo...