Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A shell script is a script or computer program written for the shell (command interpreter) of an operating system. Most commonly the term refers to scripts written for a Unix shell. Shell scripts allow users to execute several programs with complex command line arguments with a single command. They are excellent for automating simple tasks. Most shell scripts are written for the Bourne shell, since it (or a compatible variant) is available on all Unix systems. More complicated scripts are sometimes written in Perl (and therefore, by the above definition are not actually shell scripts); the exceptions are core system maintenance scripts, which cannot rely on the presence of Perl. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.