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Thought I would open this idea for public comment. How bout them commands?

Shell Idea:
Script Shell

-input
[Target], [command] [command parameters] [Priority Marker] (. = normal priority, ! = High priority)

ex
Kenny, learn 145.45.0.25 as Tonto.
Kenny, shutdown Tonto!

-prompt
[User name]:

ex
Adam: Kenny, learn 145.45.0.25 as Tonto and 145.45.0.27 as Robert.
Kenny: Learned and learned.
Adam: Kenny, shutdown Tonto.
Kenny: Lemme go tell him.
Tonto: By what authority?
Adam: Admin
Tonto: If you are admin you know the password.
Adam: ********
Tonto: Very Well.
Adam: Robert, startup Tonto.
Robert: Who is Tonto?
Adam: Kenny, inform Robert of Tonto.
Kenny: Informed.
Robert: Oh I see.
Adam: Robert, startup Tonto.
Robert splashes water on Tonto.
Adam: (blinking cursor)

It looks more like an IRC conversation than a shell, but it's interesting for sure. It reminds me of those computer AIs you see in films.

Dave: HAL, open pod bay doors.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Love it. Now if you could teach it more things, like aliasing commands and what not to do as an interim step when doing things, you should call up M$ and tell them your OS is better than theirs.

I agree with CodeCat, but I think that it would be a good introduction shell as long as it is tolerating of slight grammatical changes.

Do you have some experience with grammar parsing? It'd really make things a lot easier in this. Also, you might want to check out Constructing a Compiler from the library. It'd be a big help.

Hi Chezzestix and others,

CodeCat wrote:It looks more like an IRC conversation than a shell, but it's interesting for sure. It reminds me of those computer AIs you see in films. [...]

If you want to go in the direction of conversations, you might be able to use an existing chatbot's implementation or architecture and extend it with the capability of executing processes. Looking into natural language processing (NLP), a branch of AI, might give you some useful information.

Cheers,
Kasper

The idea is nice for a beginner level user. Although a NLP-based shell could probably be created (they're usually keyword-oriented and that's exactly what you'd expect from a shell anyway). It doesn't increase productivity one bit, though. Shells are usually meant to do that. Can you imagine executing a few commands at the same time while giving each some parameters?

As an aside, command line interpreters are supposed to be seen as some sort of a language rather than an interactive terminal.

Revisited this topic today and I feel like writing some command software like this for Windows. Stay tuned.