Ask HN: Why is it called a shell?

Posted by david4096 on Wednesday March 12, 2014 @09:26PM
from the ask-hn dept.

Would anyone like to offer how or why the command line interpreter came to be known as a shell?

( 3 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Why is it called a shell? by apples2apples on Wednesday March 12, 2014 @09:34PM (#7389610)

Came from Unix. A "shell to the kernel" that only exposed the outer layer.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why is it called a shell? by david4096 on Wednesday March 12, 2014 @10:47PM (#7389803)

Have a source?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Why is it called a shell? by apples2apples on Saturday March 15, 2014 @11:17PM (#7407635)

Not really, the internet points to this doc: http://www.multicians.org/shell.html Where Louis Pouzin of Multics claims to have coined it.

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...

[ Parent | on HN ]