

Ask HN: Why is it called a shell? - david4096

Would anyone like to offer how or why the command line interpreter came to be known as a shell?
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apples2apples
Came from Unix. A "shell to the kernel" that only exposed the outer layer.

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david4096
Have a source?

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apples2apples
Not really, the internet points to this doc:
[http://www.multicians.org/shell.html](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.pdf](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...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/14934/why-was-the-word-shell-
used-to-descibe-a-command-line-interface)

