https://blog.nath.page/tags/shell/ Recent content in Shell on blog.nath.page Hugo en-us Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.nath.page/posts/terminal/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.nath.page/posts/terminal/ <p>These are some related ideas, easy to conflate.</p> <h2 id="terminal-emulator-aka-terminal">Terminal Emulator (aka, Terminal)</h2> <p>When people say &ldquo;terminal&rdquo;, they mean the terminal emulator. Terminals used to be a physical thing in the days of yore when computers were the size of houses. Terminal emulators (like Alacritty, Konsole, Windows Terminal, etc.) render a screen with a command line the way these old terminals used to provide.</p> <h2 id="command-line">Command Line</h2> <p>The command line is the literal line in the terminal emulator which accepts commands as inputs. Commands in a terminal emulator are usually written in a &rsquo;language&rsquo; like Bash, PowerShell, and POSIX sh. However, command lines can also be for other types of languages: Java, C, Python, R, etc. For instance, you can be in a terminal emulator typing Bash commands like <code>pwd</code> and <code>ls</code> on the command line, but then you type the command <code>python</code> and enter the python command line.</p>