Terminal, the Shell, & Console

In the Utilities folder (Figure 1) inside the Applications folder is a utility called Terminal (Figure 2). This application is your window into the Unix world lurking deep inside Mac OS X. If you’re old enough, you may remember using big, clunky video terminals to communicate with large mainframes. Terminal mimics the operation of those CRT terminals, but it uses your computer’s screen, keyboard, and CPU instead of dumb-terminal hardware.

Figure 1. The contents of the Utilities folder includes applications for working with Unix.
Figure 2. A Terminal window with a shell prompt.

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