Command Line vs Command Prompt vs Terminal? Shells? [closed]

Question

So I have been really confused about this and was wondering if someone could clarify the difference between command line, command prompt and terminal?

My understanding is that a command prompt is a terminal?? But it is used in windows? And a command line is just the place in the command prompt where you type in commands to execute?

And the terminal in Mac has the same functionality?

And what about shells, do both terminal and command prompt have default shells?

Sorry a lot of questions but if someone could clarify all of these that would be great!! Thanks.

Featherstitch

Answer 1

Hopefully below clarifies your query.

Shell: The shell is a program that takes commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. There are many types of shells available like bash, ksh, sh, .....

The term shell is mostly used in Unix-Like OS such as Linux.

Command Line Interface (CLI): Basic functionality is to take inputs from Keyboard and send it to an application or system and then display text-based output returned by the application - CLI requires Shell to run.

Command Prompt: Same as Shell but developed by Microsoft(mostly used in Windows systems).

Cannady

thank you! And what about terminal? – Featherstitch

Terminal is an application used in Mac which is similar to Command Prompt of Windows. Terminal internally uses one of the shell based on configuration by default it uses /bin/bash – Cannady

uh, I disagree here.. it is not that command prompt is Windows, shell is Linux and Terminal is Mac... quora.com/… – Aggrandize