A-Shell is a general purpose development and operating environment that provides a common framework for Windows and Linux. A user running A-Shell under Windows, in other words, would see and interact with the system in exactly the same way as she would if running A-Shell under Linux.
A-Shell was introduced in 1990 as a virtualization of the Alpha Micro Operating System (AMOS), offering business applications an escape from proprietary Alpha Micro hardware to the much wider range of Unix platforms. With Windows support beginning in 1993, A-Shell became a truly portable option that freed users, dealers and programmers from underlying hardware concerns.
Key aspects of A-Shell include:
| • | Provides a shell—or command prompt—with its own virtual disk directory structure, a rich set of shell commands, command line editing and recall, a scripting capability, an editor, and a robust programming language called A-Shell Basic ("ASB"). |
| • | Includes an extensive toolbox containing hundreds of standard library routines to speed and simplify application development. It also provides a generic C-compatible interface for calling Windows (DLL) or Linux (so) dynamic libraries. |
| • | Supports both plain text and graphical user interfaces, including GUI in the Unix environment without the overhead normally required. |
| • | Operates in multiple modes: client-only (standalone PC or peer-to-peer network), server-only (web services, back-ends), and client-server (smart terminal connections over SSH). |
| • | Scales smoothly from single PCs to systems of 1000 or more users. It manages not just the independent operation of each user, but also is focused on supporting a group of users working together: file locking and sharing, system monitoring, inter-job messaging, etc. |
| • | Interfaces well with most web and computer industry standards including SQL, ODBC, PDF, XLS/XLSX, XML, JSON, SMTP, FTP/SFTP, SSL/TLS, TIF/JPG/PNG, HTTP, OAUTH2, RSA and other cryptography standards. |
In the 30-plus years since its debut, A-Shell has been continuously developed and maintained, focusing on the needs of its community of application developers while also keeping pace with changes to modern computing environments.
This documentation is regularly updated as new features are added and processes are improved. It always refers to the latest version of A-Shell.
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