What is console?

[Jyotishkar Dey]

I am self-studying C++.In some books I often have seen the term console but had no idea what it really is..Can u please clarify its meaning??

[Meetee]

Console is a program written in text-only computer interface. If you have seen DOS or Unix, they have no GUI but only text based terminal. Console programmer interacts by only display screen and keyboard while coding.

[Oralloy]

@zodilla,

X-Windows has been around longer than Windows. It is the Unix GUI interface.

That said, in both Windows and X-Windows you can run a program from the console that interacts with both the console terminal and the GUI. It's not so common in the uSoft world, but in the Unix/Linux world, console output is often used to provide quick-and-dirty debug diagnostics for GUI programs.

It's important to remember that the console is just a control program for the computer. There is serious magic about it, all it does is emulate a text terminal.