Console application

A console application is a computer program without a graphical user interface graphical user interface ( GUI) that is controlled purely through text-based commands. The contrary, pure GUI applications that are designed such as a mouse, in general for a pointing device.

Interactive console applications

Interactive console applications provide here the user a command line or a character-based user interface (Text User Interface, TUI) for operation. Examples of such applications are the Vim editor, the development environment Turbo Pascal or the word processor WordStar.

Command line programs

Command line programs can be customized with a text-only interface, such as a text terminal, the command line interpreter ( etc. Unix, DOS) control many operating systems, or the text-based interface of some operating systems with graphical user interface as the Win32 Command Prompt of Microsoft Windows. In this case, the user typically interacts only via keyboard and screen with the application. The control of the programs is done simultaneously with the call of the program by command line parameters. Well-known programs are the text search program grep and the GNU Compiler Collection.

So by looking in the following example, the program grep the text file for the string telefonliste.txt Schmid

Grep Schmid telefonliste.txt and returns the result to the console:

Schmid, Carola, management, -435 Schmidt, Eberhard, sales, -479 Alternatively, command-line programs may also be controlled by a separate GUI application. This GUI then allows an intuitive graphical control with pointing devices and then created in the background a command line and passes them to the actual program.

Benefits

The programs are

  • Faster, leaner and require less memory
  • Clearer and easier to maintain
  • More portable - GUI programming works on any operating system different. In the separation of GUI and the main program, the main program can often be compiled without profound changes to another system. Thus only a small GUI for each platform must be created from scratch. This can then also be better adapted to the peculiarities of each platform.
  • More versatile - the function of the console program can often chaining ( Piping ) with other programs - combined - even with a GUI; Inputs and outputs of command line programs can be conducted by output from and to a file ( batch mode ).

History

With the progression of the development of GUI applications in terms of the speed and ease of use of console applications for end users is greatly stepped over time in the background, but not extinct. Many operating systems use internal command line programs. Also, many organizations use key features of their data processing console applications.

Electronic visual display
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