Emacs: Terminal vs shell?

Question

I have been reading how to use a shell inside EMACS, along the way I found the concept of Terminal, which is an abstraction for the old physical devices which interacted with the shell.
But, nowadays, I really can't understand which are the advantages regarding its use, so, can you please point me out a couple of situations or examples where one should use it instead of the shell in Emacs?

Answer 1

Running a term buffer is much closer to an actual terminal. Here are a few differences:

• Shell mode provides very limited terminal emulation. Programs that take advantage of the terminal's full-screen capabilities (e.g. less, mtr, mutt, top) won't work properly. Terminal mode will generally handle these without any problem.
• In shell mode, emacs provides tab completion. In terminal mode, the shell or command-line program provide it themselves.
• Shell mode buffers the input and sends it to the process on newline. Terminal mode sends the characters to the running process immediately.
• Shell mode works like a regular buffer with the usual emacs key bindings. Terminal mode doesn't intercept most control characters unless you explicitly put it into line mode.

Answer 2

The shell is like another emacs buffer, so the same keys work in it which work in other buffers. It is not true for the terminal.

Answer 3

You can launch the console programs that clear the screen like mc in terminal.