Chapter 7. The Shell

7. The Shell

IN THIS CHAPTER

The Command Line	202
Standard Input and Standard Output	208
Redirection	210
Pipes	216
Running a Program in the Background	219
kill: Aborting a Background Job	220
Filename Generation/Pathname Expansion	221
Builtins	225

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.

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. Refer to Chapter 9 for more information on bash and to Chapter 28 for information on writing and executing bash shell scripts.