Wiktionary
n. (context computing English) A user interface in which the user interacts with the computer through lines of text instead of graphical images. Abbreviated as CLI.
WordNet
n. a user interface in which you type commands instead of choosing them from a menu or selecting an icon [syn: CLI]
Usage examples of "command line interface".
The command line interface makes it easy for programs to dribble out little comments, warnings, and messages here and there.
This way of doing it did not even have a name at the time, but when, much later, an alternative became available, it was retroactively dubbed the Command Line Interface.
It was, in other words, a glass teletype running a command line interface.
It was not until a few years later, when I began messing around with Unix, that I understood that the command line interface embodied in MPW was a re-creation of Unix.
In other words, the command line interface is available if you want it.
The wc command, for example, is the sort of thing that is easy to write with a command line interface.
The ideal OS for me would be one that had a well-designed GUI that was easy to set up and use, but that included terminal windows where I could revert to the command line interface, and run GNU software, when it made sense.
At this point the machine is still running the command line interface, with white letters on a black screen.