Category:Shell

Shell is a command-line interpreter that provides text user interface for an Operating System.

Within Emacs you can interact with various shells and other command-line/text-mode programs running as a sub-process within an Emacs terminal emulator:

• ansi-term
• shell
• term
• multi-term

eshell is a shell (not a terminal emulator, nor a process hosted in one) written in pure Emacs Lisp . It is very powerful, flexible and customizable, but poorly documented at time of writing.

Emacs itself is fully functional either in a terminal or a windowing system. Some keystrokes available under window systems may not work in a terminal and vice versa.

User can use shell inside Emacs, with shell mode, eshell or term.

shell mode

in this mode, Emacs run an inferior shell, with I/O through buffer (default to *shell*).

eshell

in this mode, Emacs emulate a shell. It is writen by Emacs Lisp.

term

in this mode, Emacs emulate a terminal, then Emacs invoke a shell that you choose, then link to the terminal.