A system and method for testing the conformance of a universal serial bus (USB) system to a set of predefined USB Specifications. One embodiment of the system comprises a USB interpreter that can be used to selectively examine device data, execute USB commands and exercise USB functions without having to create or compile a test program. The USB interpreter comprises a test application and a test application driver. The test application driver interfaces with the USB system software. The USB system software may include a USB driver, a host controller driver and other host software. The USB driver interfaces with the test application through the test application driver. The host controller driver interfaces with the host controller and thereby interfaces the software on the host system with the USB interconnect and USB devices. In one embodiment, the USB interpreter incorporates a command line interpreter through which a user can enter commands to perform specific operations and tests on the USB system. The user may execute commands in an operating system (e.g., Unix) shell without having to interrupt a USB testing or debugging session. The user may also enter commands and perform USB system testing remotely via a communications link between the user and the system's host computer.