Terminal (application)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Terminal | |
|---|---|
| Image:Terminalicon2.png | |
| Image:Appleterminal2.png Terminal 2 running under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard | |
| Developer | Apple Inc. |
| Latest release | 2.0 (237) / October 26, 2007 |
| OS | Mac OS X |
| Genre | Terminal emulator |
| License | Bundled with Mac OS X |
| Website | apple.com |
Terminal (also referred to as Terminal.app) is a terminal emulator included in Apple's Mac OS X operating system. It originated in Mac OS X's predecessors, NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, and allows the user to interact with the computer through a command line interface. On Mac OS X, Terminal is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder.
Terminal is often used to illustrate the difference between the "classic" Mac OS which was developed completely in-house at Apple, and the newer Mac OS X, which is based upon ideas from NEXTSTEP and a BSD Unix-like operating system, namely, Darwin.
When started, Terminal typically initiates a login session with a Unix shell. In versions of Mac OS X since 10.3 "Panther", the default shell is bash; prior to 10.3 the default shell was tcsh. As of 10.4 "Tiger", Mac OS X provides zsh and ksh in addition to bash and tcsh.
Prior to Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", the Terminal did not set by default the DISPLAY environment variable read by UNIX programs that make use of X Window System GUIs. Setting it permits one to launch X11 applications (provided Apple's X11.app, available as an optional package on the installation DVD, has been installed and launched). In 10.5, the Terminal does set this variable, allowing X11 applications to be launched; in addition, the default setting of DISPLAY will cause launchd to automatically start X11 when an X application is run.
Other versions of an X11 system, such as XDarwin or Xorg, may also be substituted for Apple's X11.app; the latter is available via Fink or MacPorts.
[edit] External links
- Apple - Mac OS X - Features - Unix
- List of tcsh commands for the Terminal (Mac OS X prior to v10.3)
ja:ターミナル (アプリケーション) zh:Terminal (Mac OS X)
