UNIX Commands

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 Contents
Shell Introduction
Command Format
Shell I/O
Command I/O
Command Overview

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 Shell Introduction

 After logging in, Linux/Unix starts another program

called the shell.
 Users communicate with operating system
through the shell
 A shell is a system program that allows a user to
execute
i. shell functions (internal commands)
ii. other programs (external commands)
iii. shell scripts

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 .
The shell interprets commands that the
user types in and manages their execution.

 The shell communicates with the internal part of the

operating system called the kernel
 The most popular shells are: tcsh, csh, korn, and bash
 Shell commands are case sensitive(normally lower
case)

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 Command Format
Format: command name and zero or more
arguments:
% commandname [arg1] ... [argN]
By % sign I mean prompt here and hereafter.
Arguments can be
options (switches to the command to indicate a
mode of operation) ; usually prefixed with a
hyphen (-).
non-options, or operands, basically the data to
work with (actual data, or a file name)

Exercise
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 Shell I/O
 The Shell is an interface, so the user interacts
with the shell by typing in the commands.
 The shell interprets the commands, that may
produce some results, and the control is given
back to the user when a command completes (in
general).
 In the case of external commands, shell executes
actual programs that may call functions of the OS
kernel.
 These system commands are often wrapped
around a so-called system calls, to ask the kernel
to perform an operation (usually privileged) on
your behalf.
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 Command I/O
 Input to shell:
 Command name and arguments typed by the user
 Input to a command can be obtained from any of the following:
 Keyboard, file, or other commands
 Standard input: keyboard.
 Standard output: screen.
 These STDIN and STDOUT are often together referred to as a
terminal.
 Both standard input and standard output can be redirected
from a file, to a file or other command.
 File redirection:
 < input
 > output
 >> output append

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 Commands

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 man
Manual Pages
Whenever you need help with a command
type “man” with the command name, e.g
man ls.
man is the first command to remember
Contains information about almost
everything
other commands
system calls
c/library functions
other utilities, applications, configuration files
To read about man itself type:
% man man
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 which
Displays a path name of a command.
Searches a path environmental variable
for the command and displays the
absolute path.
To find which tcsh and bash are
actually in use, type:
% which tcsh
% which bash
% man which for more details

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 Commonly used shell in most
variant of UNIX are:
• Bourne Shell (sh), first shell developed for UNIX
• Bourne Again Shell (bash), written by
programmers of Free Software Foundation, open
source shell from GNU
• Korn Shell (ksh), written by David Korn, superset
of Bourne shell, not widely distributed.
• C Shell (csh), written by Bill Joy, the author of vi,
shared much of the C language structure.
• Terminal Based C Shell (tcsh), enhanced
version of the Berkeley UNIX C shell csh

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 chsh
 Change Login Shell
 Login shell is the shell that interprets commands
after you logged in by default.
 You can change it with chsh (provided that your
system admin allowed you to do so).
 To list all possible shells, depending on
implementation:
% chsh -l
% cat /etc/shells
 % chsh with no arguments will prompt you for
the shell.

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 whereis
Display all locations of a command (or
some other binary, man page, or a source
file).
Searchers all directories to find commands
that match whereis’ argument
% whereis tcsh

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 General Commands

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 passwd
 Change your login password.
 A very good idea after getting a new one.
 It’s advisable to have your password having at
least 6 chars in the password, at least two
alphabetical and one numerical characters.
Some other restrictions (e.g. dictionary words
or previous password similarity) may apply.
 Depending on a privilege, one can change
user’s and group passwords as well as real
name, login shell, etc.
 % man passwd

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 date
Displays dates in various formats
% date
% date -u
 in GMT
% man date

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 cal

Calendar  % cal current month

 % cal 2 2000Feb 2000, leap year
for month
 % cal 2 2100not a leap year
entire year
 % cal 2 2400leap year
Years range: 1 -  % cal 9 175211 days skipped
9999  % cal 0 error
No year 0  % cal 2002 whole year

Calendar was
corrected in 1752 -
removed 11 days

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 clear
Clears the screen
There’s an alias for it: Ctrl+L
Example sequence:
% cal
% clear
% cal
Ctrl+L

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 sleep
“Sleeping” is doing nothing for some time.
Usually used for delays in shell scripts.
% sleep 2 2 seconds pause

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 Command Grouping
Semicolon: “;”
Often grouping acts as if it were a single
command, so an output of different
commands can be redirected to a file:
% (date; cal; date) > out.txt

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 alias
Defined a new name for a command
% alias
with no arguments lists currently active
aliases
% alias newcommand oldcommand
defines a newcommand
% alias cl cal 2003
% cl

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 unalias
Removes alias
Requires an argument.
% unalias cl

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 history
 Display a history of  % !n
recently used  repeat command n in
commands the history
 % history  % !-1
 all commands in the  repeat last command =
history !!
 % history 10  % !-2
 last 10  repeat second last
command
 % history -r 10
 % !ca
 reverse order
 repeat last command
 % !!
that begins with ‘ca’
 repeat last command

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 exit / logout
Exit from your login session.
% exit
% logout

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 shutdown
Causes system to shutdown or reboot
cleanly.
May require superuser privileges
% shutdown -h now - stop
% shutdown -r now - reboot

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 Files

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 ls
 List directory  % ls -F
contents  append “/” to dirs and
 Has whole bunch of “*” to executables
 % ls -l
options, see man ls
 long format
for details.
 % ls  % ls -al
 all files except those  % ls -lt
starting with a “.”  sort by modification
 % ls -a time (latest - earliest)
 all  % ls -ltr
 % ls -A  reverse

 all without “.” and “..”

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 cat
 Display and concatenate files.
 % cat
 Will read from STDIN and print to STDOUT every line
you enter.
 % cat file1 [file2] ...
 Will concatenate all files in one and print them to
STDOUT
 % cat > filename
 Will take whatever you type from STDIN and will put it
into the file filename
 To exit cat or cat > filename type Ctrl+D to
indicate EOF (End of File).

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 more / less
Pagers to display contents of large files
page by page or scroll line by line up and
down.
Have a lot of viewing options and search
capability.
Interactive. To exit: ‘q’

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 less
 less ("less is more") a bit more smart than the
more command
 to display contents of a file:
 % less filename
 To display line numbers:
 % less -N filename
 To display a prompt:
 % less -P"Press 'q' to quit" filename
 Combine the two:
 % less -NP“ Justin press enter to move down or q"
filename
 For more information:
 % man less

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 touch
By touching a file you either create it if it
did not exists (with 0 length).
Or you update it’s last modification and
access times.
There are options to override the default
behavior.
% touch file
% man touch

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 cp

Copies files / directories.

% cp [options] <source> <destination>
% cp file1 file2
% cp file1 [file2] … /directory
Useful option: -i to prevent overwriting
existing files and prompt the user to confirm.

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 mv
Moves or renames files/directories.
% mv <source> <destination>
The <source> gets removed
% mv file1 dir/
% mv file1 file2
rename
% mv file1 file2 dir/
% mv dir1 dir2

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 rm
Removes file(s) and/or directories.
% rm file1 [file2] ...
% rm -r dir1 [dir2] ...
% rm -r file1 dir1 dir2 file4 ...

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 script
Writes a log (a typescript) of whatever
happened in the terminal to a file.
% script [file]
% script
all log is saved into a file named typescript
% script file
all log is saved into a file named file
To exit logging, type:
% exit

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 find
 Looks up a file in a directory tree.
 % find . -name name
 % find . \(-name ‘w*’ -or -name ‘W*’ \)

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 mkdir
Creates a directory.
% mkdir newdir
Often people make an alias of md for it.

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 cd
Changes your current directory to a new
one.
% cd /some/other/dir
Absolute path
% cd subdir
Assuming subdir is in the current directory.
% cd
Returns you to your home directory.

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 pwd
Displays personal working directory, i.e.
your current directory.
% pwd

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 rmdir
Removes a directory.
% rmdir dirname
Equivalent:
% rm -r dirname

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 ln
Symbolic link or a “shortcut” in M$
terminology.
% ln –s <real-name> <fake-name>

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 chmod
Changes file permissions
Possible invocations
% chmod 600 filename
-rw------- 1 user group 2785 Feb 8 14:18
filename
(a bit not intuitive where 600 comes from)
% chmod u+rw filename
(the same thing, more readable)
For the assignment:
 % chmod u+x myshellscript
(mysshellscript is now executable)
 -rwx------ 1 user group 2785 Feb 8 14:18
myshellscript

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 grep
 Searches its input for a pattern.
 The pattern can be a simple substring or a
complex regular expression.
 If a line matches, it’s directed to STDOUT;
otherwise, it’s discarded.
 % echo “blah-comp203” | grep blah
 Will print the matching line
 % echo “blah-comp203” | grep zee
 Will not.

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 Pipes
What's a pipe?
is a method of interprocess communication
(IPC)
in shells a '|' symbol used
it means that the output of one program (on
one side of a pipe) serves as an input for the
program on another end.
a set of "piped" commands is often called a
pipeline
Why it's useful?
Because by combining simple OS utilities one
can easily solve more complex tasks

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