Programming Tools

A shell is a program which processes commands and returns output. Most shells also manage foreground and background processes, command history and command line editing. These features (and many more) are standard in bash, the most common shell in modern linux systems. Other shells are for example tsch, ch, etc.

A terminal is a wrapper program which runs a shell. For example, in Linux programs such as Gnome Terminal which launches a window in a Gnome windowing environment which will run a shell into which you can enter commands. In MacOsX there is Terminal or iTerm2. In Windows there is Cygwin.

Text editors for the shell are vi, nano and emacs.

It is helpful to learn the command line

• https://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/command-line/
• http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/
• http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/

To choose a text editor for programming:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment