Editing One-liner program (section)

{{Short description|Short command-line instruction}}
{{More citations needed|date=May 2019}}

In [[computer programming]], a '''one-liner program''' originally was textual input to the [[command line]] of an operating system [[Shell (computing)|shell]] that performed some function in just one line of input. In the present day, a one-liner can be
* an [[Expression (computer science)|expression]] written in the language of the shell;
* the invocation of an [[Interpreter (computing)|interpreter]] together with program source for the interpreter to run;
* the invocation of a [[compiler]] together with source to compile and instructions for [[Execution (computing)|executing]] the compiled program.
Certain [[Dynamic programming language|dynamic languages]] for [[scripting language|scripting]], such as [[AWK programming language|AWK]], [[Sed (programming language)|sed]], and [[Perl]], have traditionally been adept at expressing one-liners.
Shell interpreters such as [[Unix shell]]s or [[Windows PowerShell]] allow for the construction of powerful one-liners.

The use of the phrase ''one-liner'' has been widened to also include program-source for any language that does something useful in one line.