Common unix commands and utilities
Copyright Phillip Farrell. Last revision August 6, 2010
This page was created to list commonly used Unix commands and useful
utilities that were available on a time-sharing Tru64 Unix system
operated by the School of Earth Sciences in the early 2000s.
This page was edited in 2010 to remove
special programs that were only available on the School's system,
which is no longer in use.
The remaining commands and
utilities listed here should be available for all varieties of Unix
and Linux, including Mac OS X (from the Terminal application).
Program listings are organized by general subject categories. Keys preceded
by a
^
character are
CONTROL
key combinations. Access the online manual with the
man
program to get more information on these programs, for example,
man cp
To find a program not on this list (and there are hundreds), try the
man
program with the
-k
option followed by a keyword, for example,
man -k tape
to find all on-line manual entries that refer to programs that work with tapes.
Terminal control characters for C-shell
(csh)
| ^h, backspace |
erase previously typed character |
| ^u |
erase entire line of input so far typed |
| ^d |
end-of-input for programs reading from terminal |
| ^s |
suspend writing to terminal (freezes terminal) |
| ^q |
continue writing to terminal |
| ^z |
suspend currently running job; restart with bg or fg |
| ^c |
kill currently running program and allow clean-up before exiting |
| ^\ |
emergency kill of currently running program with no chance of cleanup |
Also see a list of special characters that should not be used in filenames.
Login and authentication
| login |
access computer; start interactive session |
| logout |
disconnect terminal session |
| passwd |
change local login password; you
must
set a
strong password
that is not easily guessed |
| kinit |
obtain kerberos ticket for connections to other
kerberized computers |
| kdestroy |
destroy kerberos tickets (authorizations) |
Information
| date |
show date and time |
| history |
list of previously executed commands |
| man |
show online documentation by program name |
| info |
online documentation for GNU programs |
| w, who |
who is on the system and what they are doing |
| whoami |
who is logged onto this terminal |
| top |
show system stats and top CPU using processes |
| uptime |
show one line summary of system status |
File management
| cat |
combine files |
| cp |
copy files |
| ls |
list files in a directory and their attributes |
| mv |
change file name or directory location |
| rm |
remove files |
| ln |
create another link (name) to a file |
| chmod |
set file permissions |
| crypt |
encode/decode a file with a private key |
| gzip, gunzip |
compress/decompress a file |
| find |
find files that match specific criteria |
Display contents of files
| cat |
copy files to display device |
| more |
show text file on display terminal with paging control |
| head |
show first few lines of a file(s) |
| tail |
show last few lines of a file; or reverse line order |
| vi |
full-featured screen editor for modifying text files |
| pico |
simple screen editor for modifying text files |
| grep |
display lines that match a pattern |
| lpr |
send file to printer |
| pr |
format file with page headers, multiple columns, etc. |
| diff |
compare two files and show differences |
| cmp |
compare two binary files and report if different |
| comm |
compare two files; show common or unique lines |
| od |
display binary files as eqivalent octal/hex codes |
| strings |
show printable text embedded in binary files |
| file |
examine file(s) and guess type: text, data, program, etc. |
| wc |
count characters, words, and lines in a file |
Directories
| cd |
change to new directory |
| mkdir |
create new directory |
| rmdir |
remove empty directory (you must remove files first) |
| mv |
change name of directory |
| pwd |
show current directory |
Disks
| df |
summarize free space on disk filesystems |
| du |
show disk space used by files or directories |
Special character handling for C-shell (See
man csh)
| * |
match any characters in a file name |
| ~user |
shorthand for home directory of user |
| $name |
substitute value of variable name |
| \ |
turn off special meaning of character that follows |
| ' |
in pairs, quote string with special chars, except ! |
| " |
in pairs, quote string with special chars, except !, $ |
| ` |
in pairs, substitute output from enclosed command |
Controlling program execution for C-shell (See
man csh)
| & |
run job in background |
|
^c
|
kill job in foreground |
| ^z |
suspend job in foreground |
| fg |
restart suspended job in foreground |
| bg |
run suspended job in background |
| ; |
delimit commands on same line |
| () |
group commands on same line |
| ! |
re-run earlier commands from history list |
| jobs |
list current jobs |
| ps |
show process information |
| kill |
kill background job or previous process |
| nice |
run program at lower priority |
| at |
run program at a later time |
| crontab |
run program at specified intervals |
| limit |
see or set resource limits for programs |
| alias |
create alias name for program (normally used in .login file) |
| sh, csh |
execute command file |
Controlling program input/output for C-shell (See
man csh)
| | |
pipe output to input |
| > |
redirect output to a storage file |
| < |
redirect input from a storage file |
| >> |
append redirected output to a storage file |
| tee |
copy input to both file and next program in pipe |
| script |
make file record of all terminal activity |
Email and communication
| msgs |
read system bulletin board messages |
| mailx |
send/read email; can be run by other programs to send exisiting files via
email |
uuencode
uudecode |
encode/decode a binary file for transmission via email |
| rn |
read USENET news groups |
Editors and formatting utilities
| sed |
programmable text editor for data streams |
| vi |
full-featured editor for character terminals |
| emacs |
GNU emacs editor for character terminals |
| xemacs |
GNU emacs editor for X Window terminals |
| pico |
very simple text editor |
| fmt |
fill and break lines to make all same length |
| fold |
break long lines to specified length |
X Window client programs (output to X terminal or server)
| xterm |
provide login shell window |
| xauth |
manipulate authorization files |
| xload |
show system load |
| xman |
full screen online manual viewer |
| xemacs |
GNU emacs editor |
| gv |
interface to contol gs to display PostScript or PDF files on screen |
| xdvi |
display DVI files on X Window (screen preview) |
| gnuplot |
interactive data plotting on screen |
TeX typesetting system
| tex |
process TeX files to DVI (device independent) output |
| latex |
process LaTeX files to DVI |
| dvips |
print DVI files on Postscript laser printer |
| xdvi |
display DVI files on X Window (screen preview) |
| latex2html |
translate LaTeX files to HTML (for web pages) |
Printing (BSD based)
| lpr |
send file to print queue |
| lpq |
examine status of files in print queue |
| lprm |
remove a file from print queue |
| enscript |
convert text files to PostScript format for printing |
Interpreted languages and data manipulation utilities
| sed |
programmable text editor for data streams |
| awk |
pattern scanning and processing language |
| perl |
Practical Extraction and Report Language |
| sort |
sort or merge lines in a file(s) by specified fields |
| tr |
translate characters |
| cut |
cut out columns from a file |
| paste |
paste columns into a file |
| dd |
copy data between devices; reblock; convert EBCDIC |
Graphics and mapping
| gnuplot |
interactive data plotting; outputs to PostScript or X Window |
| gs |
"ghostscript" converter displays PostScript files on X Window displays
or other devices |
Networking/communications
| ssh |
remote login/command execution; encrypted |
| scp |
remote non-interactive file copy; encrypted |
| sftp |
remote interactive file copy; encrypted |
| telnet |
remote network login; plain text password -
not recommended |
| ftp |
network file transfer program; plain text password -
not recommended |
| host |
find IP address for given host name, or vice versa |
| lynx |
web browser for character based (text-only) terminals |
| gzip, gunzip |
compress/decompress a file |
| tar |
combine multiple files/dirs into single archive |
uuencode
uudecode |
encode/decode a binary file for transmission via email |
Compilers, interpreters and programming tools
| csh |
command language interpreter (C-shell scripts) |
| ksh |
command language interpreter (Korn-shell scripts) |
| sh |
command language interpreter (Borne-shell scripts) |
| f77 |
Fortran 77 compiler |
| f2c |
convert fortran source code to C source code |
| gcc |
GNU C compiler |
| g++ |
GNU C++ compiler |
| dbx |
command-line symbolic debugger for compiled C or Fortran |
| make |
recompile programs from modified source |
| cflow |
generate C flow graph |
Programming libraries (see man library_name)
| lapack |
Fortran 77 routines for numerical linear algebra (supersedes LINPACK and EISPACK) |
| X |
routines to interface with X window system (no man page -- get the X Toolkit
book) |
| dbm |
database routines |
| xdr |
library routines for external data representation |
| netcdf |
routines for machine independent data representation |
Tape manipulation and archiving
| mt |
manipulate tape drive and position tape |
| dd |
unformatted tape read and write; file conversion |
| tar |
archive disk files on tape or disk |
| ltf |
read/write ANSI standard label tapes |
