title: Shells

category: page

slug: shells

sortorder: 0207

toc: False

sidebartitle: Shells

meta: A shell is a computer user interface and often refers to a text-only or primarily text command line terminal.

Shells are computer user interfaces that typically refer to a text-only or

primarily text-based command prompt.

<img src="/img/visuals/terminal-shell.png" width="100%" alt="My macOS terminal window showing the bash shell with an active virtualenv." class="technical-diagram" style="border-radius:5px;border:1px solid #999">

The above screenshot shows the bash shell with an active Python virtual

environment named `fullstackpython` within the macOS Terminal application.

* [cmd](https://docs.python.org/3/library/cmd.html) is the Pythonic

standard library module that can be used for building your own shells.

The [Python CmdModule wiki page](https://wiki.python.org/moin/CmdModule)

has a great overview of the module and its capabilities.

* [Give your Python program a shell with the cmd module](https://coderwall.com/p/w78iva/give-your-python-program-a-shell-with-the-cmd-module)

shows a short code example of how to use cmd to build a simple shell.

* [Super Charge Your Shell For Python Development](http://avilpage.com/2017/03/super-charge-your-shell-for-python-development.html)

covers aliases, environment variables via

[Autoenv](https://github.com/kennethreitz/autoenv) and some basic

shell commands often used during development.

<h3>What do you want to learn about Python development?</h3>

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{% include "choices/buttons/development-environments.html" %}

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{% include "choices/buttons/deployment.html" %}

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{% include "choices/buttons/databases.html" %}

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<h4 class="toc-subsection">2.2 <a href="/shells.html">Shells</a></h4>