Classic Shell Scripting - Arnold Robbins [253]
od
Octal dump; print file contents in octal, hexadecimal, or as character data.
patch
Update the contents of a given file to a newer version by reading the output of diff.
pwd
Print the current working directory. Usually built into modern shells.
rm
Remove files and directories.
rmdir
Remove just empty directories.
strings
Search binary files for printable strings and print them.
tail
Show the last n lines of a file. With -f, keep printing the (growing) contents of the file.
tar
Tape archiver. Now used mostly as a software distribution format.
touch
Update the modification or access time of a file.
umask
Set the default file-creation permissions mask.
zip, unzip
File archiver and compressor/decompressor. The ZIP format is portable across a broad range of operating systems.
Processes
The following commands create, remove, or manage processes:
at
Executes jobs at a specified time. at schedules jobs to be executed just once, whereas cron schedules them to be executed regularly.
batch
Executes jobs when the system is not too overloaded.
cron
Executes jobs at specified times.
crontab
Edit per-user "cron table" files that specify what commands to run, and when.
fuser
Find processes using particular files or sockets.
kill
Send a signal to one or more processes.
nice
Change the priority of a process before starting it.
ps
Process status. Print information about running processes.
renice
Change the priority of a process that has already been started.
sleep
Stop execution for the given number of seconds.
top
Interactively display the most CPU-intensive jobs on the system.
wait
Shell built-in command to wait for one or more processes to complete.
xargs
Read strings on standard input, passing as many as possible as arguments to a given command. Most often used together with find.
Miscellaneous Programs
There's always a "miscellaneous" category:
cvs
The Concurrent Versions System, a powerful source-code management program.
info
The GNU Info system for online documentation.
locale
Print information about available locales.
logger
Send messages to system logs, usually via syslog(3).
lp, lpr
Spool files to a printer.
lpq
Show the list of print jobs in progress and waiting in the queue.
Send electronic mail.
make
Control compilation and recompilation of files.
man
Print the online manual page(s) for commands, library functions, system calls, devices, file formats, and administrative commands.
scp
Secure remote copy of files.
ssh
Secure shell. Provide an encrypted connection between machines for program execution or interactive login.
uptime
Tell how long the system has been up, and show system load information.
Also in the miscellaneous category are the commands for the Revision Control System (RCS):
ci
Check in a file to RCS.
co
Check out a file from RCS.
rcs
Manipulate a file that is under RCS control.
rcsdiff
Run diff on two different versions of a file controlled by RCS.
rlog
Print the check-in log for one or more RCS-managed files.
Chapter 16. Bibliography
Unix Programmer's Manuals
UNIX Time-sharing System: UNIX Programmers Manual, Seventh Edition, Volumes 1, 2A, 2B. Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., January 1979.
These are the reference manuals (Volume 1) and descriptive papers (Volumes 2A and 2B) for the landmark Seventh Edition Unix system, the direct ancestor of all current commercial Unix systems.
They were reprinted by Holt Rinehart & Winston, but are now long out of print. However, they are available online from Bell Labs in troff source, PDF, and PostScript formats. See http://plan9.bell-labs.com/7thEdMan.
Your Unix programmer's manual. One of the most instructive things that you can do is to read your manual from front to back.[1] (This is harder than it used to be, as