What is MacShell?

MacShell is a Unix-like command line interface for the Macintosh. Its interface is modeled loosely on the Unix C-shell. Versions of a set of Unix-style file management, content searching, and other assorted utilities are built-in. It also contains a less-than-32k text editor.

A few highlights of MacShell:

• It does content searching with regular expressions (grep, egrep)
• Does filename substitution with support for a wildcard character (*).
• Supports an abbreviated version of the 'long form' Unix find command.
• Mimics Unix standard I/O (pipes, redirection to/from files).
• It's scriptable.
• Supports shell variables and aliases.
• Supports command history.
• Supports backquote substitution
• Its tools can operate on resource forks as well as data forks.
• It has an extensive manual built-in
• It can be used to query and set Macintosh file type and creator tags.
• It can be used to segment and rejoin files.

Note that MacShell contains some powerful facilities which could be dangerous if misused. Please only use it if you feel confident you know what your are doing.

Videon, Fred. (2017). MacShell. homes.cs.washington.edu/~fred/macshell.html

Download MacShell for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II