are shell commands separate programs?

So i've been learning about shells
and i was wondering:
in dos (and whatever the shell in linux is called) are the commands (cd, makedir, del, pwd, etc) actually separate programs that are executed or are they just commands that are build in to the shell?

I'm mainly asking this because i'm thinking about trying to build my own shell and it would be nice if i could just copy the executables from dos, so i wouldn't have to implement it myself
Last edited on
Run where <command>. If the tool reports "INFO: Could not find files for the given pattern(s)." then the command is not a program.

From the ones you listed, cd, makedir, and del are not programs. pwd is a program. where is also a program.
Topic archived. No new replies allowed.