Shell script

Script written for the shell, or command line interpreter, of an operating system / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:

Can you list the top facts and stats about Shell script?

Summarize this article for a 10 years old

SHOW ALL QUESTIONS

A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter.[1] The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. A script which sets up the environment, runs the program, and does any necessary cleanup or logging, is called a wrapper.

FreeBSD_10_vi_RC_Firewall.png
Editing a FreeBSD shell script for configuring ipfirewall

The term is also used more generally to mean the automated mode of running an operating system shell; each operating system uses a particular name for these functions including batch files (MSDos-Win95 stream, OS/2), command procedures (VMS), and shell scripts (Windows NT stream and third-party derivatives like 4NT—article is at cmd.exe), and mainframe operating systems are associated with a number of terms.

Shells commonly present in Unix and Unix-like systems include the Korn shell, the Bourne shell, and GNU Bash. While a Unix operating system may have a different default shell, such as Zsh on macOS, these shells are typically present for backwards compatibility.