This is related somewhat to this question about a better shell terminal/gui-interface for cmd.exe
In my quest to find a better shell terminal, the only useful thing I came across was Console2, other alternatives weren't free and generally didn't offer much more than Console2 to make them worth their price.
I can't help but wonder, "how come"? The shell terminal is a very valuable tool to a programmer, yet no one came around to try and do a better job than cmd.exe (except for the guys @ console2)??
Surely designing a command line shell terminal emulator can't be such a hard task!
Has anyone tried writing a shell terminal emulator before? What's in it? Any resources out there (say, if I want to program my own shell)?
UPDATE
17/07/2009
I rephrased the question, what I was referring to as a "shell" is actually called a terminal emulator (at least in the linux world). I only realized this recently so I thought I should revisit this question and fix it.
What about PowerShell from Microsoft? AFAIK it's free, and gives you C# power right in the shell, and tons of other features. But, it DOES require the NET Framework...
I won't endorse it yet, as I haven't really used it, but it's on my list to do...
There are plenty of shells around for Windows, bash under Cygwin is the one I use the most, and it's certainly free. I have to be honest here, cmd.exe has come a long way since the batch file processor of MSDOS. It's actually quite powerful, but still not a pimple on the rear end of bash :-).
You should try to write a command line shell, it will be an education for you. It's not that hard to do the basics if all you want is a program launcher.
But, if you want all the power of a real shell, including a full blown programming language, job control, piping, output redirection and (seriously) too many other things to list, we probably won't be hearing from you for a while. Except when you pop up your head to ask us esoteric questions about how shells should do this or that.
My bets are on Powershell for the future if you are a Windows guy.
PowerShell will be installed by default on Windows Server 08 R2 (WS08R2) and Windows 7 according to MS.
I have used Powershell myself and found it to be very useful, and if you are familiar with .NET then its all the more easier.
Download a two page reference document here, this is all you will need to get started.
I mean the gui-interface part that displays the text,
Ah! you mean what we call a "pseudo-tty" or a "terminal emulator" in unix. In windows, I guess it is called a "console host". I do not use windows, but I heard that console2 is very good. Seems there are others:
and, of course, for real programmers, you have the shell mode of (x)emacs :-)
Erm... what about all the ports of Unix command shells to Windows?
Just go with cygwin and log on using PuTTY. So much better than the standard console. :)
Also, Python (or perl for that matter) can replace the shell entirely.
You might want to try Take Command Console, formerly 4NT, formerly 4DOS.
Quick summary of points you might care about:
- Command line editing with filename completion, history, and cut & paste
- Integrate PERL, Ruby, REXX, Python, and any Active Scripting language
- Fast - 20-200% faster output display than the standard Windows console
- Integrated file explorer - examine directories, drag and drop files
- Upwardly compatible with CMD.EXE with literally thousands of additions
Not free (except trial version) and not open source. I haven't tried it myself, but I was a 4DOS junkie back in the day, before Cygwin.
If you need handy terminal - give a try to ConEmu (I'm the author). It is a Windows console window enhancement (local terminal emulator), which presents multiple consoles and simple GUI applications as one customizable tabbed GUI window with dozens of features.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/535212/programming-a-terminal-emulator-whats-in-it