Chapter 5. The Shell

5. The Shell

IN THIS CHAPTER

The Command Line	114
Standard Input and Standard Output	120
Redirection	122
Pipes	128
Running a Program in the Background	131
kill: Aborting a Background Job	132
Filename Generation/Pathname Expansion	133
Builtins	138

This chapter takes a close look at the shell and explains how to use some of its features. For example, it discusses command line syntax and also describes how the shell processes a command line and initiates execution of a program. The chapter also explains how to redirect input to and output from a command, construct pipes and filters on the command line, and run a command in the background. The final section covers filename expansion and explains how you can use this feature in your everyday work.

Except as noted everything in this chapter applies to the Bourne Again (bash) and TC (tcsh) Shells. The exact wording of the shell output differs from shell to shell: What your shell displays may differ slightly from what appears in this book. For shell-specific information, refer to Chapters 8 (bash) and 9 (tcsh). Chapter 13 covers writing and executing bash shell scripts.