Table of Contents

1 A Quick Review of the Basics

    Some Basic Commands

        Displaying the Date and Time: The date Command

        Finding Out Who’s Logged In: The who Command

        Echoing Characters: The echo Command

    Working with Files

        Listing Files: The ls Command

        Displaying the Contents of a File: The cat Command

        Counting the Number of Words in a File: The wc Command

        Command Options

        Making a Copy of a File: The cp Command

        Renaming a File: The mv Command

        Removing a File: The rm Command

    Working with Directories

        The Home Directory and Pathnames

        Displaying Your Working Directory: The pwd Command

        Changing Directories: The cd Command

        More on the ls Command

        Creating a Directory: The mkdir Command

        Copying a File from One Directory to Another

        Moving Files Between Directories

        Linking Files: The ln Command

        Removing a Directory: The rmdir Command

    Filename Substitution

        The Asterisk

        Matching Single Characters

    Filename Nuances

        Spaces in Filenames

        Other Weird Characters

    Standard Input/Output, and I/O Redirection

        Standard Input and Standard Output

        Output Redirection

        Input Redirection

    Pipes

        Filters

    Standard Error

    More on Commands

        Typing More Than One Command on a Line

        Sending a Command to the Background

        The ps Command

    Command Summary

2 What Is the Shell?

    The Kernel and the Utilities

    The Login Shell

    Typing Commands to the Shell

    The Shell’s Responsibilities

        Program Execution

        Variable and Filename Substitution

        I/O Redirection

        Hooking up a Pipeline

        Environment Control

About the Author

Stephen Kochan is the author or co-author of several best-selling titles on Unix and the C language, including Programming in C, Programming in Objective-C, Topics in C Programming, and Exploring the Unix System. He is a former software consultant for AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he developed and taught classes on Unix and C programming.

Patrick Wood is the CTO of the New Jersey location of Electronics for Imaging. He was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories when he met Mr. Kochan in 1985. Together they founded Pipeline Associates, Inc., a Unix consulting firm, where he was vice president. They co-authored Exploring the Unix System, Unix System Security, Topics in C Programming, and Unix Shell Programming.