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I have been researching and ended up going down a rabbit hole. My problem starts when I was reading this article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/application-management/svchost-service-refactoring

Microsoft say the following: The Service Host (svchost.exe) is a shared-service process that serves as a shell for loading services from DLL files.

Now I write down everything so wanted a more generic term for shell, so I search shells in computing, and the only thing I keep seeing is that it is either the CLI or GUI within an OS. Absolutely nothing about the term being applicable in scenarios such as the above. So what does Microsoft mean? I would like to understand what constitutes being named a shell and a definition please.

E M
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A 'shell' is an encapsulating object, often a process.

svchost.exe is an execution shell to encapsulate (call) services defined by shared-library (DLL) functions.

A user shell encapsulates that user's processes. Usually it also serves as an execution environment for typing commands and as an interface to interact with the user (CLI, cmd, bash, ...). Most commonly, 'shell' is used for text-based interfaces, but they can be graphic as well.

Zac67
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