BASH-COURSE

Bash is the GNU Project's shell—the Bourne Again SHell. This is an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell (ksh) and the C shell (csh). It is intended to conform to the IEEE POSIX P1003.2/ISO 9945.2 Shell and Tools standard. It offers functional improvements over sh for both programming and interactive use. In addition, most sh scripts can be run by Bash without modification.

1. Basic Operations

a. export

Displays all environment variables. If you want to get details of a specific variable, use echo $VARIABLE_NAME.

export

Example:

$ export
AWS_HOME=/Users/adnanadnan/.aws
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
LESS=-R

$ echo $AWS_HOME
/Users/adnanadnan/.aws

b. whatis

whatis shows description for user commands, system calls, library functions, and others in manual pages

whatis something

Example:

$ whatis bash
bash (1)             - GNU Bourne-Again SHell

c. whereis

whereis searches for executables, source files, and manual pages using a database built by system automatically.

whereis name

Example:

$ whereis php
/usr/bin/php

d. which

which searches for executables in the directories specified by the environment variable PATH. This command will print the full path of the executable(s).

which program_name 

Example:

$ which php
/c/xampp/php/php

e. clear

Clears content on window.

1.1. File Operations

a. cat

It can be used for the following purposes under UNIX or Linux.

• Display text files on screen
• Copy text files
• Combine text files
• Create new text files

cat filename
cat file1 file2 
cat file1 file2 > newcombinedfile
cat < file1 > file2 #copy file1 to file2

b. chmod

The chmod command stands for "change mode" and allows you to change the read, write, and execute permissions on your files and folders. For more information on this command check this link.

chmod -options filename

c. chown

The chown command stands for "change owner", and allows you to change the owner of a given file or folder, which can be a user and a group. Basic usage is simple forward first comes the user (owner), and then the group, delimited by a colon.

chown -options user:group filename

d. cp

Copies a file from one location to other.

cp filename1 filename2

Where filename1 is the source path to the file and filename2 is the destination path to the file.

e. diff

Compares files, and lists their differences.

diff filename1 filename2

f. file

Determine file type.

file filename

Example:

$ file index.html
 index.html: HTML document, ASCII text

g. find

Find files in directory

find directory options pattern

Example:

$ find . -name README.md
$ find /home/user1 -name '*.png'

h. gunzip

Un-compresses files compressed by gzip.

gunzip filename

i. gzcat

Lets you look at gzipped file without actually having to gunzip it.

gzcat filename

j. gzip

Compresses files.

gzip filename

k. head

Outputs the first 10 lines of file

head filename

l. lpq

Check out the printer queue.

lpq

Example:

$ lpq
Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)                         Total Size
active  adnanad 59      demo                            399360 bytes
1st     adnanad 60      (stdin)                         0 bytes

m. lpr

Print the file.

lpr filename

n. lprm

Remove something from the printer queue.

lprm jobnumber

o. ls

Lists your files. ls has many options: -l lists files in 'long format', which contains the exact size of the file, who owns the file, who has the right to look at it, and when it was last modified. -a lists all files, including hidden files. For more information on this command check this link.

ls option

Example:

p. more

Shows the first part of a file (move with space and type q to quit).

more filename

q. mv

Moves a file from one location to other.

mv filename1 filename2

Where filename1 is the source path to the file and filename2 is the destination path to the file.

Also it can be used for rename a file.

mv old_name new_name

r. rm

Removes a file. Using this command on a directory gives you an error. rm: directory: is a directory To remove a directory you have to pass -r which will remove the content of the directory recursively. Optionally you can use -f flag to force the deletion i.e. without any confirmations etc.

rm filename

s. tail

Outputs the last 10 lines of file. Use -f to output appended data as the file grows.

tail filename

t. touch

Updates access and modification time stamps of your file. If it doesn't exists, it'll be created.

touch filename

Example:

$ touch trick.md

1.2. Text Operations

a. awk

awk is the most useful command for handling text files. It operates on an entire file line by line. By default it uses whitespace to separate the fields. The most common syntax for awk command is

awk '/search_pattern/ { action_to_take_if_pattern_matches; }' file_to_parse

Lets take following file /etc/passwd. Here's the sample data that this file contains:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/usr/bin/zsh
daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin/nologin
bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin
sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/usr/sbin/nologin
sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync

So now lets get only username from this file. Where -F specifies that on which base we are going to separate the fields. In our case it's :. { print $1 } means print out the first matching field.

awk -F':' '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd

After running the above command you will get following output.

root
daemon
bin
sys
sync

For more detail on how to use awk, check following link.

b. cut

Remove sections from each line of files

example.txt

red riding hood went to the park to play

show me columns 2 , 7 , and 9 with a space as a separator

cut -d " " -f2,7,9 example.txt

riding park play

c. echo

Display a line of text

display "Hello World"

echo Hello World

Hello World

display "Hello World" with newlines between words

echo -ne "Hello\nWorld\n"

Hello
World

d. egrep

Print lines matching a pattern - Extended Expression (alias for: 'grep -E')

example.txt

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit amet, 
consetetur
sadipscing elitr,
sed diam nonumy
eirmod tempor
invidunt ut labore
et dolore magna
aliquyam erat, sed
diam voluptua. At
vero eos et
accusam et justo
duo dolores et ea
rebum. Stet clita
kasd gubergren,
no sea takimata
sanctus est Lorem
ipsum dolor sit
amet.

display lines that have either "Lorem" or "dolor" in them.

egrep '(Lorem|dolor)' example.txt
or
grep -E '(Lorem|dolor)' example.txt

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit amet,
et dolore magna
duo dolores et ea
sanctus est Lorem
ipsum dolor sit

e. fgrep

Print lines matching a pattern - FIXED pattern matching (alias for: 'grep -F')

example.txt

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit amet,
consetetur
sadipscing elitr,
sed diam nonumy
eirmod tempor
foo (Lorem|dolor) 
invidunt ut labore
et dolore magna
aliquyam erat, sed
diam voluptua. At
vero eos et
accusam et justo
duo dolores et ea
rebum. Stet clita
kasd gubergren,
no sea takimata
sanctus est Lorem
ipsum dolor sit
amet.

Find the exact string '(Lorem|dolor)' in example.txt

fgrep '(Lorem|dolor)' example.txt
or
grep -F '(Lorem|dolor)' example.txt

foo (Lorem|dolor) 

f. fmt

Simple optimal text formatter

example: example.txt (1 line)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

output the lines of example.txt to 20 character width

cat example.txt | fmt -w 20

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit amet,
consetetur
sadipscing elitr,
sed diam nonumy
eirmod tempor
invidunt ut labore
et dolore magna
aliquyam erat, sed
diam voluptua. At
vero eos et
accusam et justo
duo dolores et ea
rebum. Stet clita
kasd gubergren,
no sea takimata
sanctus est Lorem
ipsum dolor sit
amet.

g. grep

Looks for text inside files. You can use grep to search for lines of text that match one or many regular expressions, and outputs only the matching lines.

grep pattern filename

Example:

$ grep admin /etc/passwd
_kadmin_admin:*:218:-2:Kerberos Admin Service:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_kadmin_changepw:*:219:-2:Kerberos Change Password Service:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_krb_kadmin:*:231:-2:Open Directory Kerberos Admin Service:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false

You can also force grep to ignore word case by using -i option. -r can be used to search all files under the specified directory, for example:

$ grep -r admin /etc/

And -w to search for words only. For more detail on grep, check following link.

h. nl

Number lines of files

example.txt

Lorem ipsum
dolor sit amet,
consetetur
sadipscing elitr,
sed diam nonumy
eirmod tempor
invidunt ut labore
et dolore magna
aliquyam erat, sed
diam voluptua. At
vero eos et
accusam et justo
duo dolores et ea
rebum. Stet clita
kasd gubergre