All sh programs have the same basic syntax. bash was default on MacOS until 10.15 (Catalina).
MAC OS BASH SHELL MAC
Mac Terminal which runs UNIX commands whereas Windows Command Line is based on MS-DOS System commands.Įvery operating system has options for selecting the shell. Three big Operating Systems exist: (1) MacOS, (2) Windows, and (3) Linux Properly speaking, a graphical user interface (GUI) you use to start programs by double-clicking on icons is also a shell, but in practice by “shell” people mostly mean command-line ones. The command-line part means you control it by typing commands one line at a time. Most commands work the same, but they are different.īash is one of the popular command-line shells, programs whose main job is to start other programs (in addition to some auxiliary functions). Basically bash is sh, with more features and better syntax. Note that each shell does the same job, but each understand a different command syntax and provides different built-in functions.īash and sh are two different shells. These include: Korn shell ( ksh), enhanced C shell ( tcsh), friendly interactive shell ( fish) and Z-shell zsh. Besides bash, there are other shell programs that can be installed in a Linux system. It stands for Bourne Again Shell, an enhanced version of the original Unix shell program, sh, written by Steve Bourne and it is the default shell on many Linux distributions today. A shell interpreter takes commands in plain text format and calls Operating System services to do something. What is a bash?īash is a type of interpreter that processes shell commands. When executing non-interactively, shells execute commands read from a file. the shell can prompt the user to enter input from the keyboard. As the term implies, interactive means that the commands are run with user-interaction from keyboard. Shells may be used interactively or non-interactively. Two well-known shells are Windows shell and Bash for Linux and macOS. Most current Unix-based systems offer both a command line interface (CLI) such as the shell and a graphical user interface. Nowadays, most users prefer the graphical user interface (GUI) offered by operating systems such as Windows, Linux and macOS.
In the old days, it was the only user interface available on a Unix-like system such as Linux.
The shell is only one layer above the OS, It provides an interface to an Operating System. Shell is not part of system kernel, but uses the system kernel to execute programs, create files etc. Simply put, the shell is a a command language interpreter that takes commands in English from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. It’s a command line shell: you start another program by typing its name.
That program is a shell, i.e., a program designed to start other programs. Traditionally, when you log into a Unix system, the system would start one program for you.