Unix Commands
Command names and a brief description of each are grouped by function
Type "man name" to get full details of command name from the online manuals.
User Info & Control
login, logout, sign on and off
exit
passwd change login password
logname get login name
whoami display the effective current username
groups,id show group memberships, and show name and groups in
detail
System Data
man display reference manual pages; find reference
pages by keyword
which display the path name of a command you can execute
date display the date and time
users list, on one line, the users who are on the system
who who is logged in, where, and when
w who is on, where, when, idle time, total CPU use and
what are they doing
finger display information about users
hostname print the name of the current host system
uptime how long the system has been up, current time,
users, and load average
rup show uptime data of specific or all local machines
nslookup display domain name server information about a host
or an IP number
arch display the Sun workstation architecture of the
current host
Terminal Control, Log, Info & Setup
clear clear screen
script log a typescript of the terminal session to a file
tty get your terminal name
stty set the terminal options
tset,reset establish terminal characteristics for the
environment
tput query terminfo database
Process Info & Control
ps describe the process status of your own or a
selection of all processes
time time a command showing elapsed, system and process
times
batch,at queue a job file to be executed at a time of light
load, or at a particular time
atq print the queue of jobs waiting to be run
atrm remove jobs spooled by at
nice run a command at low priority
kill send a signal to a process, or terminate a process
Communications
telnet user interface to the TELNET protocol for logging on
to a network host
rlogin remote login access to other network hosts
ftp file transfer program to move files between the
local and a network host
rep remote file copy, like cp (file operations) but
allows a host: filename prefix
write write messages to another user on your local host
mesg permit or deny messages (from write for example)
mail,elm interactive mail-processing systems
vacationon activates & configures a vacation message when going away
vacationoff removes any vacation message & restores .forward file
Languages
sh,csh,tcsh command interpreters, the Bourne shell, the C shell,
and the T C shell
cc,pc,m2c,f77 C, Pascal, Modula2, and FORTRAN 77 compilers, awk,
lewx, yacc pattern, lexical, and syntax analysers
File Operations
mv move or rename a file
cp copy a file to a file or files to a directory
cat concatenate a file or files to standard out (the
display)
Compress, uncompress, zcat compress or uncompress a file or uncompress
a file to standard out
file determine file type
touch update times of last access and modification of a
file
chmod change mode
chgrp change the group ownership of a file
Directory Operations
ls list contents of directory
cd change working directory
pwd print working directory name
mkdir make a directory
rm,rmdir remove (unlink) files or directories
ln make links to files
du summarise disk usage
quota display disk usage and limits
df report free disk space on file systems
Text Scan
more,page browse through a text file
view view a file without changing it using the vi visual
editor
head display first few lines of specified files
tail display the last part of a file
od octal, decimal, hex, or ascii dump a file
wc count and report the lines, words, and characters in
a file or files
cmp compare two files
diff,diff3 show differences between the contents of files or
directories
sdiff side-by-side difference program
Text Editors
vi screen oriented (visual) display editor based on ex (This editor is
on all unix systems but is not recommended for beginners.)
pico screen oriented editor as used in the "pine" email program and is
recommended for beginners ( May not be on all systems.)
ex,ed text editors (line editors)
Filters
lwf,enscript,mp convert plain text to postscript
sort sort and/or merge files
grep,egrep,fgrep search for a pattern in a file
spell,spellin,spel find spelling errors
lout
look find lines in a sorted list or words in the system
dictionary
expand,unexpand expand tabs to spaces, and vice versa
tr translate or delete each character found in one set
using a second set
uniq remove or report repeated lines in a file
comm select or reject lines common to two sorted files
cut remove selected fields from each line of a file
join relational database operator
sed stream editor
Printer Control
lpq display spool queue entries
lpr send job to printer
lprm remove jobs from the line printer spooling queue
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