Ask HN: Why is it called a shell? 2 points by david4096 12y ago ↗ HN Would anyone like to offer how or why the command line interpreter came to be known as a shell?
[–] apples2apples 12y ago ↗ Came from Unix. A "shell to the kernel" that only exposed the outer layer. [–] david4096 12y ago ↗ Have a source? [–] apples2apples 12y ago ↗ 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.pdfLooking 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...
[–] david4096 12y ago ↗ Have a source? [–] apples2apples 12y ago ↗ 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.pdfLooking 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...
[–] apples2apples 12y ago ↗ 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.pdfLooking 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...
3 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 19.7 ms ] threadKen 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...