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Applications

User-level programs which perform some useful task
  • possibly supplied with system e.g.  ls,  vim,  gcc
  • possibly implemented by users e.g.  dcc,  check,  Webcms3
Applications live in  /bin,  /usr/bin, etc  (via PATH)

Applications are generally built using libraries

  • but may also make direct use of system calls
Unix was unusual in having a command interpreter (bash)
  • that runs as a user-level process (not privileged)
  • but can invoke other user-level processes