Ask HN: Why is it called a shell?

2 pointsdavid40963 comments

Would anyone like to offer how or why the command line interpreter came to be known as a shell?

Came from Unix. A "shell to the kernel" that only exposed the outer layer.

Have a source?

Not really, the internet points to this doc: http://www.multicians.org/shell.html Where Louis Pouzin of Multics claims to have coined it.

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...