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Shell Commands

PICLE provides a built-in shell command to execute operating system shell commands directly from the interactive prompt.

This command works on Windows and Linux.

Basic Usage

Use the command as:

shell <command>

Examples:

picle#shell echo hello
hello

picle#shell python --version
Python 3.x.x

The command is global, so it can be used from the top prompt and from subshells.

Platform Behavior

shell executes commands via Python subprocess.run(...) with shell=True.

  • On Windows, commands run through the system shell (for example cmd.exe).
  • On Linux, commands run through the default shell (for example /bin/sh).

This means you can use native shell commands for each platform.

# Windows
picle#shell dir

# Linux
picle#shell ls -la

Output And Errors

PICLE captures and prints both standard output and error output:

  • stdout is printed as regular command output.
  • stderr is printed using error output formatting.
  • If a command exits with a non-zero code and produced no stderr, PICLE prints the exit code.

If no command is provided, PICLE returns:

shell command is required

Getting Help

Use built-in help to see command documentation:

picle#help shell

Security Note

shell runs commands on the host operating system, so avoid passing untrusted input directly into it.