Unix Commands Command/Syntax What it will do awk/nawk [options] file scan for patterns in a file and process the

results cat [options] file concatenate (list) a file cd [directory] change directory chgrp [options] group file change the group of the file chmod [options] file change file or directory access permissions change the ownership of a file; can only be done by the chown [options] owner file superuser chsh (passwd -e/-s) change the user's login shell (often only by the superuser) username login_shell compare two files and list where differences occur (text or cmp [options] file1 file2 binary files) compress [options] file compress file and save it as file.Z copy file1 into file2; file2 shouldn't already exist. This cp [options] file1 file2 command creates or overwrites file2. cut (options) [file(s)] cut specified field(s)/character(s) from lines in file(s) date [options] report the current date and time dd [if=infile] [of=outfile] copy a file, converting between ASCII and EBCDIC or [operand=value] swapping byte order, as specified compare the two files and display the differences (text files diff [options] file1 file2 only) df [options] [resource] report the summary of disk blocks and inodes free and in use du [options] [directory or report amount of disk space in use file] echo [text string] echo the text string to stdout ed or ex [options] file Unix line editors emacs [options] file full-screen editor evaluate the arguments. Used to do arithmetic, etc. in the expr arguments shell. file [options] file classify the file type find directory [options] find files matching a type or pattern [actions] finger [options] report information about users on local and remote machines user[@hostname] ftp [options] host transfer file(s) using file transfer protocol grep [options] 'search search the argument (in this case probably a file) for all string' argument occurrences of the search string, and list them.

egrep [options] 'search string' argument fgrep [options] 'search string' argument gzip [options] file gunzip [options] file zcat [options] file head [-number] file hostname kill [options] [-SIGNAL] [pid#] [%job] ln [options] source_file target lpq [options] lpstat [options] lpr [options] file print to defined printer lp [options] file lprm [options] remove a print job from the print queue cancel [options] ls [options] [directory or file] mail [options] [user] mailx [options] [user] list directory contents or file permissions simple email utility available on Unix systems. Type a period as the first character on a new line to send message out, question mark for help. compress or uncompress a file. Compressed files are stored with a .gz ending display the first 10 (or number of) lines of a file display or set (super-user only) the name of the current machine send a signal to the process with the process id number (pid#) or job control number (%n). The default signal is to kill the process. link the source_file to the target show the status of print jobs

Mail [options] [user] man [options] command show the manual (man) page for a command mkdir [options] directory make a directory more [options] file less [options] file pg [options] file page through a text file

mv [options] file1 file2

move file1 into file2 octal dump a binary file, in octal, ASCII, hex, decimal, or od [options] file character mode. passwd [options] set or change your password paste [options] file paste field(s) onto the lines in file pr [options] file filter the file and print it on the terminal ps [options] show status of active processes pwd print working (current) directory rcp [options] hostname remotely copy files from this machine to another machine rlogin [options] hostname login remotely to another machine remove (delete) a file or directory (-r recursively deletes the rm [options] file directory and its contents) (-i prompts before removing files) rmdir [options] directory remove a directory rsh [options] hostname remote shell to run on another machine saves everything that appears on the screen to file until exit is script file executed stream editor for editing files from a script or from the sed [options] file command line sort [options] file sort the lines of the file according to the options chosen source file read commands from the file and execute them in the current shell. source: C shell, .: Bourne shell. . file report any sequence of 4 or more printable characters ending strings [options] file in <NL> or <NULL>. Usually used to search binary files for ASCII strings. stty [options] set or display terminal control options tail [options] file display the last few lines (or parts) of a file tape archiver--refer to man pages for details on creating, tar key[options] [file(s)] listing, and retrieving from archive files. Tar files can be stored on tape or disk. tee [options] file copy stdout to one or more files telnet [host [port]] communicate with another host using telnet protocol create an empty file, or update the access time of an existing touch [options] [date] file file translate the characters in string1 from stdin into those in tr [options] string1 string2 string2 in stdout uncompress file.Z uncompress file.Z and save it as a file uniq [options] file remove repeated lines in a file

uudecode [file]

decode a uuencoded file, recreating the original file encode binary file to 7-bit ASCII, useful when sending via uuencode [file] new_name email, to be decoded as new_name at destination vi [options] file visual, full-screen editor wc [options] [file(s)] display word (or character or line) count for file(s) whereis [options] report the binary, source, and man page locations for the command command named which command reports the path to the command or the shell alias in use who or w report who is logged in and what processes are running concatenate (list) uncompressed file to screen, leaving file zcat file.Z compressed on disk