Chapter 7. Introduction to the Command Line

1. File-Handling Utilities
1.1. mkdir, touch: Creating Empty Directories and Files
1.2. rm: Deleting Files or Directories
1.3. mv: Moving or Renaming Files
1.4. cp: Copying Files and Directories
2. Handling File Attributes
2.1. chown, chgrp: Change the Owner or Group of One or More Files
2.2. chmod: Changing Permissions on Files and Directories
3. Shell Globbing Patterns
4. Redirections and Pipes
4.1. A Little More About Processes
4.2. Redirections
4.3. Pipes
5. Command-Line Completion
5.1. Example
5.2. Other Completion Methods
6. Starting and Handling Background Processes: Job Control
7. A Final Word

In Chapter 1, Basic UNIX® System Concepts you were shown how to launch a shell. In this chapter, we will show you how to work with it.

The shell's main asset is the number of existing utilities: there are thousands of them, and each utility is devoted to a particular task. We will only look at a (very) small number of these utilities here. One of UNIX®'s greatest assets is the ability to combine these utilities, as we shall see later.