Basic Unix Shell Commands

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The shell is the Unix command interpreter used to pass commands to an operating system; so called because it is the part of the operating system that interfaces with the outside world. The following table lists some common Unix shell built-in commands and two editors emacs and vi. For more shell commands, refer to the Unix shell command manual pages or a Unix command line cheat sheet.

Command	Description
cat	Concatenate files and print on the standard output.
cd	Change the current working directory.
chmod	Change the permissions mode of a file.
cp	Copy files.
date	Print the date and time.
emacs	Screen-oriented (visual) display editor
grep	Search a file for a pattern.
ls	List status information for files and directory contents.
man	Find and display reference manual pages.
mkdir	Make directories.
more/page	Browse or page through a text file.
mv	Move files.
pwd	The pwd (“print working directory”) tells you where you are in the file system by printing the current working directory.
rm/rmdir	Remove directory entries.
vi	Screen-oriented (visual) display editor