Unix Command Summary

See the Unix tutorial for a leisurely, self-paced introduction on how to use the commands listed
below. For more documentation on a command, consult a good book, or use the man pages.
For example, for more information on grep, use the command man grep.

Contents

• cat --- for creating and displaying short files

• chmod --- change permissions
• cd --- change directory
• cp --- for copying files
• date --- display date
• echo --- echo argument
• ftp --- connect to a remote machine to download or upload files
• grep --- search file
• head --- display first part of file
• ls --- see what files you have
• lpr --- standard print command (see also print )
• more --- use to read files
• mkdir --- create directory
• mv --- for moving and renaming files
• ncftp --- especially good for downloading files via anonymous ftp.
• print --- custom print command (see also lpr )
• pwd --- find out what directory you are in
• rm --- remove a file
• rmdir --- remove directory
• rsh --- remote shell
• setenv --- set an environment variable
• sort --- sort file
• tail --- display last part of file
• tar --- create an archive, add or extract files
• telnet --- log in to another machine
• wc --- count characters, words, lines

cat

This is one of the most flexible Unix commands. We can use to create, view and concatenate
files. For our first example we create a three-item English-Spanish dictionary in a file called
"dict."

% cat >dict
red rojo
green verde
blue azul
<control-D>
%

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<control-D> stands for "hold the control key down, then tap 'd'". The symbol > tells the
computer that what is typed is to be put into the file dict. To view a file we use cat in a
different way:

% cat dict
red rojo
green verde
blue azul
%
If we wish to add text to an existing file we do this:
% cat >>dict
white blanco
black negro
<control-D>
%

Now suppose that we have another file tmp that looks like this:

% cat tmp
cat gato
dog perro
%
Then we can join dict and tmp like this:
% cat dict tmp >dict2

We could check the number of lines in the new file like this:

% wc -l dict2
8

The command wc counts things --- the number of characters, words, and line in a file.

chmod

This command is used to change the permissions of a file or directory. For example to make a
file essay.001 readable by everyone, we do this:

% chmod a+r essay.001

To make a file, e.g., a shell script mycommand executable, we do this

% chmod +x mycommand
Now we can run mycommand as a command.

To check the permissions of a file, use ls -l . For more information on chmod, use man
chmod.

cd

Use cd to change directory. Use pwd to see what directory you are in.

% cd english

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 % pwd
% /u/ma/jeremy/english
% ls
novel poems
% cd novel
% pwd
% /u/ma/jeremy/english/novel
% ls
ch1 ch2 ch3 journal scrapbook
% cd ..
% pwd
% /u/ma/jeremy/english
% cd poems
% cd
% /u/ma/jeremy

cp

Use cp to copy files or directories.

% cp foo foo.2
This makes a copy of the file foo.
% cp ~/poems/jabber .

This copies the file jabber in the directory poems to the current directory. The symbol "."
stands for the current directory. The symbol "~" stands for the home directory.

date

Use this command to check the date and time.

% date
Fri Jan 6 08:52:42 MST 1995

echo

The echo command echoes its arguments. Here are some examples:

% echo this
this
% echo $EDITOR
/usr/local/bin/emacs
% echo $PRINTER
b129lab1

Things like PRINTER are so-called environment variables. This one stores the name of the
default printer --- the one that print jobs will go to unless you take some action to change
things. The dollar sign before an environment variable is needed to get the value in the
variable. Try the following to verify this:

% echo PRINTER
PRINTER

ftp

Use ftp to connect to a remote machine, then upload or download files. See also: ncftp

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Example 1: We'll connect to the machine fubar.net, then change director to mystuff, then
download the file homework11:

% ftp solitude
Connected to fubar.net.
220 fubar.net FTP server (Version wu-2.4(11) Mon Apr 18 17:26:33 MDT 1994) ready.
Name (solitude:carlson): jeremy
331 Password required for jeremy.
Password:
230 User jeremy logged in.
ftp> cd mystuff
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> get homework11
ftp> quit

Example 2: We'll connect to the machine fubar.net, then change director to mystuff, then
upload the file collected-letters:

% ftp solitude
Connected to fubar.net.
220 fubar.net FTP server (Version wu-2.4(11) Mon Apr 18 17:26:33 MDT 1994) ready.
Name (solitude:carlson): jeremy
331 Password required for jeremy.
Password:
230 User jeremy logged in.
ftp> cd mystuff
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> put collected-letters
ftp> quit

The ftp program sends files in ascii (text) format unless you specify binary mode:

ftp> binary
ftp> put foo
ftp> ascii
ftp> get bar
The file foo was transferred in binary mode, the file bar was transferred in ascii mode.

grep

Use this command to search for information in a file or files. For example, suppose that we
have a file dict whose contents are

red rojo
green verde
blue azul
white blanco
black negro
Then we can look up items in our file like this;
% grep red dict
red rojo
% grep blanco dict
white blanco
% grep brown dict
%

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Notice that no output was returned by grep brown. This is because "brown" is not in our
dictionary file.

Grep can also be combined with other commands. For example, if one had a file of phone
numbers named "ph", one entry per line, then the following command would give an
alphabetical list of all persons whose name contains the string "Fred".

% grep Fred ph | sort

Alpha, Fred: 333-6565
Beta, Freddie: 656-0099
Frederickson, Molly: 444-0981
Gamma, Fred-George: 111-7676
Zeta, Frederick: 431-0987
The symbol "|" is called "pipe." It pipes the output of the grep command into the input of the
sort command.

For more information on grep, consult

% man grep

head

Use this command to look at the head of a file. For example,

% head essay.001

displays the first 10 lines of the file essay.001 To see a specific number of lines, do this:

% head -20 essay.001

This displays the first 20 lines of the file.

ls

Use ls to see what files you have. Your files are kept in something called a directory.

% ls
foo letter2
foobar letter3
letter1 maple-assignment1
%

Note that you have six files. There are some useful variants of the ls command:

% ls l*
letter1 letter2 letter3
%

Note what happened: all the files whose name begins with "l" are listed. The asterisk (*) is the
" wildcard" character. It matches any string.

lpr

This is the standard Unix command for printing a file. It stands for the ancient "line printer."
See

TCS Internal
 % man lpr

for information on how it works. See print for information on our local intelligent print
command.

mkdir

Use this command to create a directory.

% mkdir essays
To get "into" this directory, do
% cd essays
To see what files are in essays, do this:
% ls

There shouldn't be any files there yet, since you just made it. To create files, see cat or emacs.

more

More is a command used to read text files. For example, we could do this:

% more poems

The effect of this to let you read the file "poems ". It probably will not fit in one screen, so you
need to know how to "turn pages". Here are the basic commands:

• q --- quit more

• spacebar --- read next page
• return key --- read next line
• b --- go back one page

For still more information, use the command man more.

mv

Use this command to change the name of file and directories.

% mv foo foobar

The file that was named foo is now named foobar

ncftp

Use ncftp for anonymous ftp --- that means you don't have to have a password.

% ncftp ftp.fubar.net
Connected to ftp.fubar.net
> get jokes.txt

The file jokes.txt is downloaded from the machine ftp.fubar.net.

print

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This is a moderately intelligent print command.
% print foo
% print notes.ps
% print manuscript.dvi

In each case print does the right thing, regardless of whether the file is a text file (like foo ), a
postcript file (like notes.ps, or a dvi file (like manuscript.dvi. In these examples the file is
printed on the default printer. To see what this is, do

% print
and read the message displayed. To print on a specific printer, do this:
% print foo jwb321
% print notes.ps jwb321
% print manuscript.dvi jwb321
To change the default printer, do this:
% setenv PRINTER jwb321

pwd

Use this command to find out what directory you are working in.
% pwd
/u/ma/jeremy
% cd homework
% pwd
/u/ma/jeremy/homework
% ls
assign-1 assign-2 assign-3
% cd
% pwd
/u/ma/jeremy
%

Jeremy began by working in his "home" directory. Then he cd 'd into his homework
subdirectory. Cd means " change directory". He used pwd to check to make sure he was in the
right place, then used ls to see if all his homework files were there. (They were). Then he
cd'd back to his home directory.

rm

Use rm to remove files from your directory.

% rm foo
remove foo? y
% rm letter*
remove letter1? y
remove letter2? y
remove letter3? n
%

The first command removed a single file. The second command was intended to remove all
files beginning with the string "letter." However, our user (Jeremy?) decided not to remove
letter3.

rmdir

Use this command to remove a directory. For example, to remove a directory called "essays",
do this:

TCS Internal
 % rmdir essays

A directory must be empty before it can be removed. To empty a directory, use rm.

rsh

Use this command if you want to work on a computer different from the one you are currently
working on. One reason to do this is that the remote machine might be faster. For example,
the command

% rsh solitude

connects you to the machine solitude. This is one of our public workstations and is fairly fast.

See also: telnet

setenv

% echo $PRINTER
labprinter
% setenv PRINTER myprinter
% echo $PRINTER
myprinter

sort

Use this commmand to sort a file. For example, suppose we have a file dict with contents
red rojo
green verde
blue azul
white blanco
black negro
Then we can do this:
% sort dict
black negro
blue azul
green verde
red rojo
white blanco
Here the output of sort went to the screen. To store the output in file we do this:
% sort dict >dict.sorted
You can check the contents of the file dict.sorted using cat , more , or emacs .

tail

Use this command to look at the tail of a file. For example,

% head essay.001

displays the last 10 lines of the file essay.001 To see a specific number of lines, do this:

% head -20 essay.001

This displays the last 20 lines of the file.

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tar

Use create compressed archives of directories and files, and also to extract directories and
files from an archive. Example:

% tar -tvzf foo.tar.gz

displays the file names in the compressed archive foo.tar.gz while

% tar -xvzf foo.tar.gz

extracts the files.

telnet

Use this command to log in to another machine from the machine you are currently working
on. For example, to log in to the machine "solitude", do this:

% telnet solitude

See also: rsh.

wc

Use this command to count the number of characters, words, and lines in a file. Suppose, for
example, that we have a file dict with contents

red rojo
green verde
blue azul
white blanco
black negro
Then we can do this
% wc dict
5 10 56 tmp

This shows that dict has 5 lines, 10 words, and 56 characters.

The word count command has several options, as illustrated below:

% wc -l dict
5 tmp
% wc -w dict
10 tmp
% wc -c dict
56 tmp

dummy

Under construction

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11.1 Unix Commands

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
chown [options] owner file change the ownership of a file; can only be done by the 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 binary
cmp [options] file1 file2
files)
compress [options] file compress file and save it as file.Z
copy file1 into file2; file2 shouldn't already exist. This command
cp [options] file1 file2
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 swapping
[operand=value] byte order, as specified
diff [options] file1 file2 compare the two files and display the differences (text files 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
expr arguments evaluate the arguments. Used to do arithmetic, etc. in the 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 string'
argument

egrep [options] 'search search the argument (in this case probably a file) for all
string' argument occurrences of the search string, and list them.

fgrep [options] 'search

string' argument
gzip [options] file compress or uncompress a file. Compressed files are stored with
a .gz ending

TCS Internal
gunzip [options] file

zcat [options] file

head [-number] file display the first 10 (or number of) lines of a file
hostname display or set (super-user only) the name of the current machine
kill [options] [-SIGNAL] send a signal to the process with the process id number (pid#) or
[pid#] [%job] job control number (%n). The default signal is to kill the process.
ln [options] source_file
link the source_file to the target
target
lpq [options]
show the status of print jobs
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] list directory contents or file permissions
mail [options] [user]
simple email utility available on Unix systems. Type a period as
mailx [options] [user] the first character on a new line to send message out, question
mark for help.
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 page through a text file

pg [options] 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

TCS Internal
 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 command
sed [options] file
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 in
strings [options] file <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, listing,
tar key[options] [file(s)] 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
touch [options] [date] file create an empty file, or update the access time of an existing file
translate the characters in string1 from stdin into those in string2
tr [options] string1 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 email,
uuencode [file] new_name
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)
report the binary, source, and man page locations for the
whereis [options] 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

TCS Internal