Terminal vs. Bash vs. Command line vs. Prompt 

URGENT! Read this: lukesmith.xyz/deletion

I love your stuff Luke, but to be honest I use only like 5-10% of the tips you give. I'm here mostly for the powerful boomer energy

"All of those different things are different." - L. Smith 2019

People on stack overflow be like: 3:13-3:16

So, to sum up: - Terminal: Program that emulates the functionality of an old terminal. Nowadays it includes much more functionalities than old days. - Bash: Interpreted language than is being used to interface with the computer and OS. - Command line: The line in wich you are writting the code inside the terminal - Prompt: Small portion of information, at the beginning of every command line that shows something related to the computer user or basic information about the computer within few words Let me know if i am wrong. Dont forget, we all are learners, dont take it seriusly.

2:07 Sure, you could consider bash a language. But the terminal emulator isn't running bash-the-language, it's running bash-the-shell which runs bash-the-language. (A shell is a type of interpreter.) Also, the shell you use is normally decided by a per-user configuration setting, not by the terminal emulator.

I've lived all of 67 years now and it wasn't until I began watching you, Luke, that I learned I'm a boomer and that I have all these amazing powers at my disposal. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Bah! Humbug! From one boomer to another, I love your vids :)

Every video Luke uploads is another month Luke will go MIA.

1 day later Distrotube: Why use Bash or Zsh when you can AWK everything

Me: Damn Luke, the holiday season really did improve your YT productivity ! Luke: Don't worry kiddo, I'll go AWOL for the next 2 months.

Very informative... I just have one question. How do you change the background color of Python 3.7? 😂

I have never seen this type of video before, but it is suddenly obvious that there should be more people pointing out these differences. Very good! Thank you.

This is SOOOOOOOO desperately needed! You made so many nice tutorials before but if this one is not cleared out of the way those tutorials could not be appreciated by newbies. Thank you so much my Tech God Luke!

9:01 Angry command line

[9:40] Sure, the prompt colors are set in the shell configuration, but they're not interpreted by the shell. It's the terminal emulator that interprets and displays them (ANSI escape codes).

love your explanations on stuff... always clear, concise, and complete...

"Laugh at it" 100 times! No need to laugh at people you can politely correct them and explain to them so they understand. Noobs are in a learning process and the last thing they want is to be launched at. Keep doing the good work through your videos and be more sensitive towards noobs because this is a field where even the most experienced engineers have new technologies to learn almost every year. By the way I gave the video 👍🏽

3:08 CTRL+K, CTRL+U, CTRL+Y is basically -copying- cutting and pasting in bash. Copying/pasting to/from clipboard in a script could fall under "copying and pasting in bash" too.

"bash is merely a language" "bash has this binding control C"

You are very talented in explaining complex stuff. Thank you so much and keep posting videos plz.

"What is bash?" Isn't it obvious? Bash is bloat.

Hey, Luke! There is a way to run Python-like environment as a shell. It is called xonsh and it is a superset of Python aimed to make it more shell-like (completion, piping, history, easy access to environment variables). As far as I know it is in development but that's pretty cool project (but to be frank it has many issues, e.g. slow startup time).

Good video! I'd also add in about a little difference between CLI (ls, dd, youtube-dl, pacman) and TUI (vim, newsboat, ranger, irssi) programs while on this topic, because people tend to confuse these pretty often.

Another awesome and informative video! Thanks Luke!

4:25 Ctrl-Shift-C / Ctrl-Shift-V is also common AFAIK.

I did need this video. You answered questions I've been wondering about.

This is the video I was looking for, but I didn't know it until I watched it. Thanks!

3:04 Rather than “stupid question” I’d call it an ambiguous question. As such, it is one that is NOT likely to be answered the way the asker intended. Asking how to copy/paste in bash could mean to read/write the OS clipboard, it could mean yank/put in `set -o vi` mode, it could mean to pipe into and out of `tee`, it could mean to `exec > >(tee $name.log | log -t $name)`, etc. Great info though.

5 years of being a Python coder, and never knew how much I needed this video

Love it, when Luke's face appears in the beginning, i know it's gonna be goood. :)

Great content. Keep up the good work Luke!

I truly love your stuff Luke.

This is a well done introduction video thanks a lot!

I have two questions: 1. How do I copy and paste in bash? 2. How do I scroll up and down in bash? Joking aside, I'm a complete newbie and those are the questions I would have definitely asked before having watched this video. I can now confidently say that the amount of silly questions I'll be asking in the future has decreased by two. 😀Thank you.

Hey there, love you're stuff. Just a small observation: Running /bin/sh happens alot when you are working in container land so POSIX compliancy has risen at least in my scripts ;) Edit: typo

Hi, very indulging video and thanks for identifying these major differences.

Actually...THANK you! I always wanted to change the prompt color schemes 🙏

"Don't say funny things…" - Luke Smith, 2019

OH YES NEW VIDEO !!! Thx luke i learn a lot with you !

In short all of these different things are different.

finally understanding some basic things,thanks to you, it was great help

Quick Summary: Terminal, Bash, Comand Line, Prompt... different aspects of what you may be using at the same time. [1]: a TERMinal started out as the *Hardware* keyboard+display on your desk (with NO processing logic inside) that sent all keystrokes to a remote computer (where the thinking+CPU+programs run) and the computer would send text information back to be displayed for you. Like THIS VT100 terminal: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT100 For the last 30 years, this is usually a terminal *emulator* program that behaves the same way that an old terminal Used to... but no separate hardware. [2] BASH is a "shell" program that runs as soon as you login to unix/Linux, and tries to understand commands that you type, then figure out what you want the computer to do next. (often by finding another program you want to run) There are sever "shell" options: sh=Bourne-Shell, ksh=Korn-sheell, csh=C-shell, bash=bourne-again-shell, and more. [3] a COMMMAND Line represents the command/directions/request/instructions that YOU type into the computer's shell. [4] a PROMPT means that the computer is waiting for you to type something in to the computer from the keyboard. Prompt also refers to any short text message that the computer prints out (just before the cursor) to let you know what's going on, and what to type next. So... al lof these may be "active" at the same time when you are logged into a Linux computer. The terminal could be the "window frame" and background, that defines the frame, appearance, fonts, and general "canvas" for text information to be displayed on. Within that terminal environment, the computer may be running a bash "shell" that is displaying a prompt, and waiting for you to type a command line. After you type the command line and press enter, the shell reads that command line and tries to do what you want, or finds another program that will do that for you. If you want to change how things LOOK, for background/fonts, or scroll around, that is generally related to the Termianal's scope of responsibility. If you want to change how things BEHAVE, or your environment variables, or change your prompt, work with the Shell. If you want to automate things with a simple "shell script" program, then you will need to create a file full of shell commands using an editor like vi/vim and then tell the shell to run the commands in that file. Almost anything else requires running additional programs. (which the shell will help you find+run through $PATH directories) SO: That's a 30 second summary of this 11 minute video.

Love your content. Big vim help when I was new to it.

This video was very helpful! Thank you!

Wow great explanation Luke!

It's also good to know about interactive vs non-interactive shells and login vs non-login shells

Thanks man, not the target audience, but this helped me a lot. I just opened up a terminal for the first time in my life to copy/paste and patch a game on Linux. Really just wanted to know some basic terminology to research further and understand what exactly I was doing.

Hi, I loved this video. where can I find more information on how the shell interprets and execute commands? Specially the interface with the kernel.

Helpful a bit like parameter, argument and keyword arguments

Very informative video, learnt something good about shell promps today :) nice Are there any interactive shells available for javascript as well? Which one are you using? Whats so nice about it? Thanks in advance

Спасибо Ильич!

Thanks for the Information Dr.Eggman

5:12 Hold on: if bash is a language, how can it have a setting to stop a running program? Were you referring to the bash interpreter perhaps?

thanks, i am a 15 year running (open)SUSE amateur...this video clears up a bit of the "pro mind set"...Thanks for the effort (Y)

SO SO helpful thank you !!

So, tell me Luke. How _do_ I change directories in st?

Me thinking the last video was good. Luke: there is another EDIT: just realized that this comment was cringy as hell.

Then what does it mean to run shell on emacs (M-x shell)? I'm really new to this and learning kind of randomly, so forgive me if this is a dumb question

Thank you for this video. This is the answer to the questions I have.

I was really confused with the word like bash, shell, terminal emulator and other.... Thanks to you I get the point

Thank god for this video. I’m taking an operating systems class and was confuse during lecture. 😂

Like :) Thank you, fun video to watch. I have a love/hate relationship with BASH... It is extremly powerfull but sometimes it drives me nuts..

I wish I could hit the subscribe button more than once . What a damn good vid

The only useful boomer I've seen in my life

Ladies and Gentlemen, Luke Smith is back in the game

Wtf did he just use a mouse at the start ??!!

I would say your terminal (emulator) decides which colors etc. you can use how in your PS1. Or is your zsh directly talking to your graphics chip?

Bash, zsh, the shell I would say , should be defined as "your environment" and the command line being "your non graphical interface"

This is exactly what i needed thank you

Well, isn't "man xclip" an answer to "How do you copy in bash"?

Thank you for this information Sir

Thanks Luke. My confusion is being directed better now.

The terminal on tinycore has this behaviour, which I think comes from flwm, the window manager: highlight something with a right click to copy, then middle click to paste. That's really annoying. The mac terminal has probably the most intuitive copy-paste behavior because macs use the command key for keyboard shortcuts, so the terminal can just use the regular shortcuts.

Tinycore linux uses /bin/sh as the default shell. It uses busybox, I believe, which gives a POSIX-compliant, but not bash-compatible shell, which has caused me headaches when running scripts that assume that /bin/sh is bash.

Epic battle!

You do not have to laugh at people not knowing things, but at least you gave them a chance to know it. Appreciate it

Hi Luke, what is the difference between Terminal Emulator and Terminal Multiplexer?

This is a very good video .. good to know these terms

Thank you for this.

5:05 Actually vscode has an embedded terminal that does this. It copies when you've selected something and halts the program when not.

Luke Smith for President!

> Ctrl-C will not work in any kind of terminal emulator to copy things conhost.exe (cmd) does just this, and it's better too. Why would you want to stop your program when in visual mode?

Nice, very helpful.

do you think the sunglasses make up for the hair you lost in some way? Jung just whispered to me there might be some in that there?

Very usefull. Thanks.

So what is the difference between a command line (interface) and a terminal emulator?

"You secretly have something to learn you don't know about" got me :_D

I didn't learn something, I learned everything.

Running Python as your primary shell isn't really such a crazy thing, actually. Well, the normal built in python shell is not really suitable as a command shell, but there are alternate shells like xonsh which are designed to replace bash in interactive use by mixing together python and bash syntax, so you can do things like piping and redirection, but also use python syntax for things like writing lists, dicts, loops, conditional statements, functions, classes, etc which is much simpler than bash's syntaxes. Another possibility is to use IPython with full rehashx magic, which will load everything in your $PATH into IPython magic commands, so you can run any system commands just like in bash. IPython used to even ship with `sh` profile which is designed for use in this manner.

Thank you!

are window powershell and cmd considered as terminal emulator or shell?

I am confused about the stdin and stdout I was able to let’s say open 2 terminal windows in zsh (or bash etc) and (but I don’t remember how) run a command, like echo something > to/a/destination and it was echoing in the second terminal window... I am looking to get my understanding right about what is the difference between stdin/out vs. the name of each output and I am as much confused as those people mixing the prompt with terminal with bash... etc

Personally, I don't see why a normal user's prompt on a local machine should have the user@hostname section. Obviously it should always be clear if you are root or on an ssh connection, but it seems like a huge waste of space. I have my Zsh prompt set to: [0]:~ % %F{green}[%F{yellow}%?%F{green}]%f:%F{blue}%B%2~%b%f %# %# will be % or # depending on if you are root, but I have kept Bash as the shell for my root user just to make it really obvious.

So terminal is the window, bash is the language inside the window, command line run different languages, and prompt is a specific name in each shell?

I so much prefer zsh with omz to bash, I don't know why zsh isn't just the default tbh, there's so much QoL improvements. I understand that there may be some situations where bash is better or needed but honestly they've got to be few and far between since basically any bash command will work in zsh and then if you do need to use bash for some reason it's as simple as typing "bash" into your terminal window.

Hey Luke, how do I change font size in bash????

Another stupid question. How do I copy some text from above command line into command line? Let's say, I ran some program, it outputted some text, I want to copy part of that text and put as an argument to another program or something.

Im trying to learn tcsh. But bash is the language running in my shell. Is there a permanent way to make my shells tcsh?

What window manager are you using?

I would be interested in knowing how you manage backups, are you using any tools beside tar or rsync? what about encryption, automation, etc. Thank you