The Linux Command Line

Dedication; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Why Use the Command Line?; What This Book Is About; Who Should Read This Book; What's in This Book; How to Read This Book; Prerequisites; Learning the Shell; Chapter 1: What Is the Shell?; 1.1 Terminal Emulators; 1.2 Your First Keystrokes; 1.3 Try Some Simple Commands; 1.4 Ending a Terminal Session; Chapter 2: Navigation; 2.1 Understanding the Filesystem Tree; 2.2 The Current Working Directory; 2.3 Listing the Contents of a Directory; 2.4 Changing the Current Working Directory; Chapter 3: Exploring the System; 3.1 More Fun with ls; 3.2 Determining a File's Type with file; 3.3 Viewing File Contents with less; 3.4 A Guided Tour; 3.5 Symbolic Links; Chapter 4: Manipulating Files and Directories; 4.1 Wildcards; 4.2 mkdir--Create Directories; 4.3 cp--Copy Files and Directories; 4.4 mv--Move and Rename Files; 4.5 rm--Remove Files and Directories; 4.6 ln--Create Links; 4.7 Let's Build a Playground; 4.8 Final Note; Chapter 5: Working with Commands; 5.1 What Exactly Are Commands?; 5.2 Identifying Commands; 5.3 Getting a Command's Documentation; 5.4 Creating Your Own Commands with alias; 5.5 Revisiting Old Friends; Chapter 6: Redirection; 6.1 Standard Input, Output, and Error; 6.2 Pipelines; 6.3 Final Note; Chapter 7: Seeing the World as the Shell Sees It; 7.1 Expansion; 7.2 Quoting; 7.3 Final Note; Chapter 8: Advanced Keyboard Tricks; 8.1 Command Line Editing; 8.2 Completion; 8.3 Using History; 8.4 Final Note; Chapter 9: Permissions; 9.1 Owners, Group Members, and Everybody Else; 9.2 Reading, Writing, and Executing; 9.3 Changing Identities; 9.4 Exercising Your Privileges; 9.5 Changing Your Password; Chapter 10: Processes; 10.1 How a Process Works; 10.2 Controlling Processes; 10.3 Signals; 10.4 More Process-Related Commands; Configuration and the Environment; Chapter 11: The Environment; 11.1 What Is Stored in the Environment?; 11.2 How Is the Environment Established?; 11.3 Modifying the Environment; 11.4 Final Note; Chapter 12: A Gentle Introduction to vi; 12.1 Why We Should Learn vi; 12.2 A Little Background; 12.3 Starting and Stopping vi; 12.4 Editing Modes; 12.5 Moving the Cursor Around; 12.6 Basic Editing; 12.7 Search and Replace; 12.8 Editing Multiple Files; 12.9 Saving Our Work; Chapter 13: Customizing the Prompt; 13.1 Anatomy of a Prompt; 13.2 Trying Some Alternative Prompt Designs; 13.3 Adding Color; 13.4 Moving the Cursor; 13.5 Saving the Prompt; 13.6 Final Note; Common Tasks and Essential Tools; Chapter 14: Package Management; 14.1 Packaging Systems; 14.2 How a Package System Works; 14.3 Common Package Management Tasks; 14.4 Final Note; Chapter 15: Storage Media; 15.1 Mounting and Unmounting Storage Devices; 15.2 Creating New Filesystems; 15.3 Testing and Repairing Filesystems; 15.4 Formatting Floppy Disks; 15.5 Moving Data Directly to and from Devices; 15.6 Creating CD-ROM Images; 15.7 Writing CD-ROM Images; 15.8 Extra Credit; Chapter 16: Networking; 16.1 Examining and Monitoring a Network; 16.2 Transporting Files over a Network; 16.3 Secure Communication with Remote Hosts; Chapter 17: Searching for Files; 17.1 locate--Find Files the Easy Way; 17.2 find--Find Files the Hard Way; Chapter 18: Archiving and Backup; 18.1 Compressing Files; 18.2 Archiving Files; 18.3 Synchronizing Files and Directories; Chapter 19: Regular Expressions; 19.1 What Are Regular Expressions?; 19.2 grep--Search Through Text; 19.3 Metacharacters and Literals; 19.4 The Any Character; 19.5 Anchors; 19.6 Bracket Expressions and Character Classes; 19.7 POSIX Basic vs. Extended Regular Expressions; 19.8 Alternation; 19.9 Quantifiers; 19.10 Putting Regular Expressions to Work; 19.11 Final Note; Chapter 20: Text Processing; 20.1 Applications of Text; 20.2 Revisiting Some Old Friends; 20.3 Slicing and Dicing; 20.4 Comparing Text; 20.5 Editing on the Fly; 20.6 Final Note; 20.7 Extra Credit; Chapter 21: Formatting Output; 21.1 Simple Formatting Tools; 21.2 Document Formatting Systems; 21.3 Final Note; Chapter 22: Printing; 22.1 A Brief History of Printing; 22.2 Printing with Linux; 22.3 Preparing Files for Printing; 22.4 Sending a Print Job to a Printer; 22.5 Monitoring and Controlling Print Jobs; Chapter 23: Compiling Programs; 23.1 What Is Compiling?; 23.2 Compiling a C Program; 23.3 Final Note; Writing Shell Scripts; Chapter 24: Writing Your First Script; 24.1 What Are Shell Scripts?; 24.2 How to Write a Shell Script; 24.3 More Formatting Tricks; 24.4 Final Note; Chapter 25: Starting a Project; 25.1 First Stage: Minimal Document; 25.2 Second Stage: Adding a Little Data; 25.3 Variables and Constants; 25.4 Here Documents; 25.5 Final Note; Chapter 26: Top-Down Design; 26.1 Shell Functions; 26.2 Local Variables; 26.3 Keep Scripts Running; 26.4 Final Note; Chapter 27: Flow Control: Branching with if; 27.1 Using if; 27.2 Exit Status; 27.3 Using test; 27.4 A More Modern Version of test; 27.5 (( ))--Designed for Integers; 27.6 Combining Expressions; 27.7 Control Operators: Another Way to Branch; 27.8 Final Note; Chapter 28: Reading Keyboard Input; 28.1 read--Read Values from Standard Input; 28.2 Validating Input; 28.3 Menus; 28.4 Final Note; 28.5 Extra Credit; Chapter 29: Flow Control: Looping with while and until; 29.1 Looping; 29.2 while; 29.3 Breaking out of a Loop; 29.4 until; 29.5 Reading Files with Loops; 29.6 Final Note; Chapter 30: Troubleshooting; 30.1 Syntactic Errors; 30.2 Logical Errors; 30.3 Testing; 30.4 Debugging; 30.5 Final Note; Chapter 31: Flow Control: Branching with case; 31.1 case; 31.2 Final Note; Chapter 32: Positional Parameters; 32.1 Accessing the Command Line; 32.2 Handling Positional Parameters En Masse; 32.3 A More Complete Application; 32.4 Final Note; Chapter 33: Flow Control: Looping with for; 33.1 for: Traditional Shell Form; 33.2 for: C Language Form; 33.3 Final Note; Chapter 34: Strings and Numbers; 34.1 Parameter Expansion; 34.2 Arithmetic Evaluation and Expansion; 34.3 bc--An Arbitrary-Precision Calculator Language; 34.4 Final Note; 34.5 Extra Credit; Chapter 35: Arrays; 35.1 What Are Arrays?; 35.2 Creating an Array; 35.3 Assigning Values to an Array; 35.4 Accessing Array Elements; 35.5 Array Operations; 35.6 Final Note; Chapter 36: Exotica; 36.1 Group Commands and Subshells; 36.2 Traps; 36.3 Asynchronous Execution; 36.4 Named Pipes; 36.5 Final Note; Colophon; Updates;