1.4 Further Customization

There's not much more you can do with the Terminal application than what's shown in this chapter, but there's an infinite amount of customization possible with the bash shell (or any other shell you might have picked). To learn more about how to customize your shell, read the manpage . Be warned , though, the bash manpage is over 4,500 lines long!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, manpages are the Unix version of online help documentation. Just about every command-line (Unix) command has a corresponding manpage with lots of information on starting flags, behaviors, and much more. You can access any manpage by simply typing man cmd . Start with man man to learn more about the man system.

For more information on customizing bash , see Cameron Newham and Bill Rosenblatts' book Learning the bash Shell , or Unix Power Tools , by Jerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly, and Mike Loukides, both available from O'Reilly.