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Out of sheer curiosity and the pursuit of trivia, I couldn't find an answer on Google quickly.

Dear fellow programmers, what is the first programming language to provide an interactive shell?

Xavier Ho
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  • This is not an SO question (unless it's moved to Community Wiki) as it calls for discussion and opinion. (The [FAQ](http:/stackoverflow.com/faq) specifically addresses avoiding discussion-type questions.) – Ken White Feb 23 '12 at 00:41
  • @Ken White: I don't see an community wiki checkbox anymore in the edit section - did they move it? – Xavier Ho Feb 23 '12 at 00:43
  • Do shells that turned into programming languages count? – Louis-Philippe Huberdeau Feb 23 '12 at 00:46
  • @Ken: I thought [consensus was CW was mostly avoided these days](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/)? – sarnold Feb 23 '12 at 00:47
  • As long as it's Turing-complete, I'd say yes. – Xavier Ho Feb 23 '12 at 00:47
  • @sarnold Whoa, they removed CW? I have been away for far too long. – Xavier Ho Feb 23 '12 at 00:49
  • I see the checkbox has been removed, but a [meta post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts) Sept. 2011 says CW is still useful. I don't see this as a programming (code/toolset) type question, though, because it's not directly answerable. See, for instance, @sarnold's answer: "I can't prove others weren't first, but...". I don't see this as a question that can have a single answer accepted without at least a ton of subjective answers and discussions happening first. (Not downvoting the question, BTW, but I did cast a close vote for those reasons.) – Ken White Feb 23 '12 at 00:56
  • @XavierHo, thanks. :) Noticed the `community wiki` checkbox is still available to people posting an answer to the question, so it appears to still be a viable option. (Noticed while answering another question.) – Ken White Feb 23 '12 at 01:04
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    @Ken: We just need one grey-beard to come around and teach us kids a thing or two. I mean, before the LISP documentation I found, there's COBOL (doesn't feel very REPL-ish), Algol-58 (doesn't feel very REPL-ish), FORTRAN (same...), and the different competing assembly languages. It doesn't feel likely that there was anything earlier -- one guy from the original gang ought to be enough to know. :) – sarnold Feb 23 '12 at 01:05
  • @sarnold, unless you're one of those greybeards, it's apparently going to take at least two answers to get there. :) I was just about to check to see if maybe [programmers](http://programmers.stackexchange.com) might be a better fit for this question. – Ken White Feb 23 '12 at 01:09

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I can't prove other systems weren't earlier but the LISP REPL construct is one common name given to this style of interpreter.

The LISP I Programmers Manual from 1960 (PDF) includes a mention on page 2 that is apropos:

Enlargements of the basic system are available for various purposes. The compiler version of the LISP system can be used to compile S-expressions into machine code. Values of compiled functions are computed about 60 times faster than the S-expressions for the functions could be interpreted and evaluated. The LISP-compiler system uses about half of the 32,000 memory.

sarnold
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