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As I understand it, a command-line app is typically something which is only accessed from your shell's command line, like 'ls'. You can type 'ls' and follow it with whatever arguments you want to follow it with, but it will always land you back at your command prompt (excepting crashes or infinite loops, of course). It's user interface IS the command line.

A terminal app (or a console app), while also accessed from one's shell, is not reliant solely on the shell's command line. It can have an interface of it's own, like 'hnsh' does, or like 'qbasic' in DOS does (did?).

By these definitions, all command-line apps are a subset of terminal/console apps, and not the other way around.

Personally, I do not think the difference is pedantic, but the terms do seem to get confused and muddled together frequently.



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