Below is a selection of basic unix commands that will span Solaris, HP and AIX. We hope that you find these command useful.

BANNER copies a string or variable into an expanded text banner

banner ulrika

banner "hello I'm over here" - text with white space must be enclosed by quotes

CAL calender returns the days and dates of the selected month and year

cal By default shows current month's details

cal 2000 shows the details (all 12 months) of year 2000

cal 8 1999

cal 8 2010 Check out your invoicing dates in August 2010

CAT concatenates (LATIN - to join together) a file and displays its contents

cat joe displays file contents of joe

cat > newfile allows input directly to the newfile created

Ctrl-d makes the file empty (if it already existed) - then input text/commands etc

Ctrl-d quits the file/command/data input sequence

cat file1 file2 > newfile merges the two input files into file newfile

COPY copy one file another file and retain the original file

cp file1 file2

cp file1 file2 ~sven copy file1 and file2 to user sven's home directory

cp -r /export/home/john /export/home/sue

date specifies the day, date, time, time zone and year date

ECHO useful for sending diagnostic messages to standard output or a named file.

echo hello returns hello to screen

echo "hello there" if there is white space it must be made into a string.

echo $HOME $SHELL $TZ echoes the values of built-in shell variables:

/export/home/vincent /bin/ksh EIRE-GB

FILE displays the category of the named file

file newfile returns a message saying that newfile is a text file (if it is a text file)

file /export/home/helen returns export/home/helen is a directory

Understanding if a file is a text, data or binary file is important in how we manage that file.

You'll see what I mean if you do cat /usr/bin/ls - cat is a command that works on a text file

/usr/bin/ls is a binary file - they don't get on... beep beep beep

head displays the first 10 lines of a file by default

head -25 rhyme displays the first 25 lines of a file

ID

id displays user and group ID for the current user

id -a show secondary group information for the current user

id -a sven user and group info plus secondary group information for user sven

is used to create a new filename and link it to the original file, i.e. to give a file a second or third + name. The link count keeps track of the number of filenames to which a link file is linked. A zero link count indicates that the file has been deleted.

LIST list file to screen/output device

ls -l l - stands for long

ls -a a - lists hidden files (dot, and dot dot files)

ls -s s - adds a field to the start of a file in blocks (usually 512 bytes)

ls -i i - gives i-node details

ls -las las - stands for everything

ls -l db.dat db.inx - gives information only on the files specified

ls -l gl_data.?? - lists all gl_data. files with any two character suffix.

ls .??* - lists all hidden files

ls *.c - matches all C Language source code files that end with .c

ls ar_*.dat - lists files starting ar_ ending with .dat

ls {ar,ap,sa}data.* - lists all files beginning arcdata. , apdata. , sadata.

ls s{a,e,i,o,u}{n,t} - expands to files starting san,sen,sin,son,set,sit,sot,sut

ls -l *tt* - will list all files whose filenames contain tt

? - the question mark character represents one character only

ls -l lett? - would list files like lett1, lett2, lett3, but ignore letters, letter, lettuce as it only searches for 1 character after tt

[ ] - these parenthesis are used to enclose a whole string

ls -l [ayegj]* - will list all files whose names start with a,y,e,g or j

ls -l [n-z]* - lists all files whose names start with a letter between n and z

! - the exclamation mark character used inside square parenthesis has a negating ;effect

ls -l [!shrp]* - lists all files whose names start with any characters except s,h,r,p

ls -l [!l-z]* - lists all files whose names don't start with a letter between l and z

ls -l .appreg.x.?????????? - list all .appreg files with DDMMYYHHmm suffix

ls -l .appreg.x.??? - list all .appreg files with 3 character suffixes

ls -l .appreg* - list all files with .appreg. prefix

ls *.[co] - list all files with file endings .c or .o

ls *t* - list all files with ‘t’ in the title.

ls FC - returns files with file type flags in multiple columns

ls -a - lists all files including dot files

ls -A - lists all files except dot files

ls -l - lists files in long format, showing permissions, owner, size, date and full filename.

ls -lt - same as above but sorted in date order.

ls ltr - same as above but sorted in reverse date order.

ls -l db* the * represents any missing character in a filename, or can represent no characters at all

MORE displays files one screen at a time

more file1 q for quit return for one more line space for one more page

MOVE FILE renames file to a new file with a different name

mv ted hatty

mv dir1 dir2 moves dir1 to dir2 - note that both directories must both have the same parent directory

OD displays an octal dump of the file specified

od joe

od -b joe - not currently available

od -c joe - displays characters

od -d joe - displays decimal characters

who | sort sorts who is logged on into alphabetic order

cat jon joe | wc -l does a word count on the merged files of jon and joe

SORT sorts files as specified (alpha by default) but also numeric when specified with -n

sort file1 > sortedfile1 executes an alpha sort of the contents of file1 and creates a sorted output file called sortedfile1

sort huge > naffile & sorts as above and the & character allows the job to run in the background - it will issue a job number like [3329]

sort - sorts files according to one or more keys in ascending/descending alphabetic/numeric order

sort [options] [ sort-field-information] [file list]

-n numeric sort

-r reverse order sort

-o filename send the output to the file called filename

sort +1 -2 names assuming that the field count starts at 0, + means "move across one field before starting to sort"

sort -n +2 -3 parts

sort -n -o sorted +1 -2 parts

TAIL displays the last 10 lines of a file (if 10 not specified)

tail -30 filea

tail -50f tradinghostlog Display continuous output

tail -5 filec

WHO tells you who is logged on to the system

who

WHO AM I identifies the current session, terminal, date and time

who am i

WHOAMI returns just the session user name

whoami

wc joe returns the number of lines, characters and words in the file

wc -l returns number of lines

wc -w returns number of words

wc -c returns number of characters only

!! - recall and execute last command

!set - repeat last set command

!echo - recall and execute last echo command

!-3 - recall and execute the third last command

!7 - recall and execute event number 7 (from the history events line)

!history - recall and execute history command

!?history - recall and execute history command from line 1 of the history events

!?joe - recall and execute joe command

!?myfile? filename - recall and myfile command containing the word filename

ls *joe - see if file joe exists

cat !$ - dispay contents of file joe (from above)

cd sass ; ls

alias del rm - creates alias of rm

alias sa "cd sass ; ls -la" - create alias ‘sa’ to change directory to sass and list files.

alias whoison "who | sort" creates alias whoison.

cd ~dave/tools/myscripts;tar cf - | (cd ~ dave/tools/newscripts; tar xvpf -) - creates a new directory and maintains the original file fingerprints/properties/permissions/owner/group and date. cp does not!

cd ~sa_vstep - returns to /home/sa_vstep

set quoted=\"quotes\" - to produce a string that retains the quotes

echo $quoted - returns "quotes"

set noquoted="noquotes"

echo $unquoted - returns noquotes

echo '*' or echo \ * - returns just an * (asterisk)

echo 'Surprise\!' - returns Surprise!

are an important unix utility for manipulating text files. They are characterised by taking input from a file, carrying out an intermediate change to the data and sending their output to a file. The input and output files may be the keyboard and the screen. Standard I/O is used by default unless otherwise specified. Each filter is a command that causes a program to be executed which carries out a certain task on a named file.

wc counts words, characters and lines in a file

grep searches for a text pattern in a file

grep [<options>] pattern <file list>

grep soot test displays the lines in file test that include the word soot

grep -vc soot test returns the number of lines in file test that don't contain the word soot

the -vc option reverses the normal command

grep abcd* searches the contents of each file in the directory for the text indicated

grep -e ' [Dd]ec | [nN]ov filename - searches filename to see if either Nov or Dec exist.

grep xyz * search all files in the current directory for the string "xyz"

egrep provides variations on the facilities provided by grep

fgrep provides variations on the facilities provided by grep

nawk this filter also performs pattern matching allowing the user to specify an action that's to be carried out on each selected line. In fact it's a full programming language in its own right, with a general syntax similar to C. It's suitable for the manipulation of files that are organised in columns of text.

ls -l | nawk '{print $9 " " $5}'

displays the contents of the 3rd and 9th columns which have been extracted and displayed in reverse order.

find recursively searches directory trees for files matching certain criteria

find <path> [<expression>] this expression forms a boolean test which is similar to a compound IF statement

find /export/home/mary the following are examples of available tests.

find . -type f -print | xargs grep xyz search all files in the current directory subtree for string xyz and ensure that no error occurs due to filename expansion exceeding system arguments limit.

To print the filename in the above add:

/dev/null to the end of the command.

care should be taken when using commands with exec, there can be unexpected results

find /example /new/example -exec grep -l 'where are you {} \;

search the two directories /example and /new/example for files containing the string ‘where are you’ and print the file names.

find / \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o'\) -atime +7 -exec rm {} \;

removes all files named a.out and *.o that have not been accessed for a week.

find /bin -type H -print Print the names of all files in the bin directory that are context sensitive (that is hidden directories)

find / -fsonly hfs -print Print the names of all files on this machine. (Be careful with this one)

find /dummy/dim -type f -print | xargs chmod 444 Change premissions on all regular files

find /dummy/dim -type d -print | xargs chmod 555 in a directory subtree to 444 and permissions on all directories to 555.

find / -acl '*.*+r' -print find all files that have a read bit set in any access control list entry.

find / -acl opt -print find all files that have optional access control list entries.

name filename searches for files that match the filename

mtime searches for files that match the identified modification time

type x searches for files that match the identified type (e.g. d,or p, or - )

print display on screen the full pathname of each matching file

exec execute the command identified

find /export/home/mary -name flip* -print search for files in a specified directory for filenames that begin with flip

find /export/home/mary -name france* -exec rm {} \; the sequence {} \; is added after a command that needs arguments

find /export/home/mary -name *.doc -exec lp this prints all the files in Mary's directory ending wiith .doc to the default printer

find -type d -print displays on screen the contents of all directories, starting from the root directory

find / displays the contents of all directories starting from the root directory

cut extracts fields of data from a data file

cut -f1 parts displays the first field of the file parts

paste inserts fields of data into existing files

paste parts suppliers will paste the contents of file suppliers to the contents of parts and display the result

care should be taken with the rm command

rm * will remove all files from the current directory (except the hidden files) -

rm db* deletes all files starting with db

uniq reports on the repeated lines in a file and removes the duplicates

uniq rhyme rhyme1will remove and report duplicates in file rhyme

tr translates characters in an input file - a character pattern may be searched for and replaced (translated) in a specified text file

tr [a-z] [A-Z] < rhyme replaces lower case characters by upper case

tail displays the last few lines of a file

tail -5 rhyme displays the last five lines of file rhyme

BDV-UNIX-SKILLS