A shell is a software program that the user interacts with while a shell script is written to interact with the shell. The most popular shell is the Bourne shell which uses the $ command prompt.
A shell script is a series of commands written in a text file. Shell scripts perform operations such as manipulating files and executing programs. For instance, the $ who command allows you to see the names of people who are logged in to a Linux system. Shell scripts are primarily used with the Linux operating system.
(The dollar sign is the shell prompt where you type commands.)
You should upload shell scripts in ASCII transfer mode (not binary) to your cgi-local directory to ensure proper file permission settings. The first line of each script must read:
#!/bin/sh , #!/bin/csh
Reference the script using /cgi-local (and not /cgi-bin). Always remember to include echo "Content-type: text/html\n\n".
For more information on shell scripts, see the following link: http://www.linux.org.mt/node/49#N1051C