Patent ID: 8090838

Claim:
At a client in a network computing environment, a computer-implemented method of asynchronously controlling or changing the flow of a shell operation in a remote shell session using a signal message to execute an action as desired, the method comprising: opening a remote shell session at a command-line shell processor by a client including a command-line interface, wherein the command-line interface allows a user to input commands, opening the remote shell session comprising: sending by the client an open shell request message to the command-line shell processor; and receiving a shell identifier from the command-line shell processor for identifying one or more execution request messages sent from the client as being part of the remote shell session; during the open remote shell session with the command-line shell processor: using by the client the command-line interface to send an execution request message of the one or more execution request messages that includes a command for execution at the command-line shell processor, wherein the command is sent as a unit that includes one or more of a command name and one or more switches, wherein the command is stored in a storage in the command-line shell processor; and prior to receiving information about completion of the execution of the command, creating at the client and sending by the client using the command-line interface an asynchronous signal message rather than a special character in an input stream to the command-line shell processor, the asynchronous signal message terminating the execution of the command in-progress at the command-line shell processor, wherein the open remote shell session between the client and the command-line shell processor continues operating after termination of the command.