Wildcard | Meaning |
---|---|
* | Matches any characters |
? | Matches any single character |
[characters] | Matches any character that is a member of the set characters |
[!characters] | Matches any character that is not a member of the set characters |
[:class:] | Matches any character that is a member of the specified class |
Character Class | Meaning |
---|---|
[:alnum:] | Matches any alphanumeric character |
[:alpha:] | Matches any alphabetic character |
[:digit:] | Matches any numeral |
[:lower:] | Matches any lowercase letter |
[:upper:] | Matches any uppercase letter |
Even if we have no terminal emulator running, several terminal sessions continue to run behind the graphical desktop. We can access these sessions, called virtual consoles, by pressing CTRL-ALT-F1 through CTRL-ALT-F6 on most Linux distributions. When a session is accessed, it presents a login prompt into which we can enter our username and password. To switch from one virtual console to another, press ALT-F1 through ALT-F6. On most systems, we can return to the graphical desktop by pressing ALT-F7.
Section | Contents |
---|---|
1 | user commands |
2 | Programming interfaces for kernel system calls |
3 | Programming interfaces to the C library |
4 | Special files such as device nodes and drivers |
5 | File formats |
6 | Games and amusements such as screen savers |
7 | Miscellaneous |
8 | System administration commands |
man section search_term
[me@linuxbox ~]$ man 5 passwd
Prints all or part of an environment
[me@linuxbox ~]$ printenv
Displays the current time and date.
[me@linuxbox ~]$ date
Wed Aug 31 04:50:31 UTC 2022
By default, displays a calendar of the current month
[me@linuxbox ~]$ cal
August 2022
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31
Display the current amount of free space on our disk drives
[me@linuxbox ~]$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 15115452 5012392 9949716 34% /
/dev/sda5 59631908 26545424 30008432 47% /home
/dev/sda1 147764 17370 122765 13% /boot
tmpfs 256856 0 256856 0% /dev/shm
Display the amount of free memory
[me@linuxbox ~]$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 513712 503976 9736 0 5312 122916
-/+ buffers/cache: 375748 137964
Swap: 1052248 104712 947536
Note that unlike Windows, which has a separate file system tree for each storage device, Unix-like systems such as Linux always have a single file system tree, regardless of how many drives or storage devices are attached to the computer. Storage devices are attached (or more correctly, mounted) at various points on the tree according to the whims of the system administrator, the person (or people) responsible for the maintenance of the system.
Display the file's type
[me@linuxbox ~]$ file picture.jpg
picture.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01
Returns which type of command is being interpreted by the shell ie. a binary or a shell builtin
[me@linuxbox ~]$ type echo
echo is a shell builtin
View text files
[me@linuxbox ~]$ less filename
The which utility takes a list of command names and searches the path for each executable file that would be run had these commands actually been invoked.
[me@linuxbox ~]$ which echo
echo: shell built-in command
[me@linuxbox ~]$ where echo
echo: shell built-in command
/bin/echo
The whereis utility checks the standard binary, and manual page directories for the specified programs, printing out the paths of any it finds.
[me@linuxbox ~]$ whereis echo
echo: /bin/echo /usr/share/man/man1/echo.1
Command initiates a reboot
[me@linuxbox ~]$ reboot
Command is useful after a program dies leaving a terminal in an abnormal state
[me@linuxbox ~]$ reset
sort or merge records (lines) of text and binary files
[me@linuxbox ~]$ ls | sort
Applications/
Desktop/
Documents/
Downloads/
Library/
Movies/
Music/
Pictures/
Projects/
Public/
go/
Report or filter out repeated lines in a file
[me@linuxbox ~]$ echo "first\nsecond\nsecond\nthird" | sort -r | uniq
third
second
first
-c
: The number of bytes in each input file is written to the standard output. This will cancel out any prior usage of the-m
option.-l
: The number of lines in each input file is written to the standard output.-m
: The number of characters in each input file is written to the standard output. If the current locale does not support multibyte characters, this is equivalent to the -c option. This will cancel out any prior usage of the-c
option.-w
: The number of words in each input file is written to the standard output.
[me@linuxbox ~]$
-i
, causesgrep
to ignore cate when performing the search-v
, tellsgrep
to print only those lines that do not match the pattern-n
, tellsgrep
to print the line numbers where the match occurs
[me@linuxbox ~]$ cat linux.md | grep -n grep
175:## `grep`
177:- `-i`, causes `grep` to ignore cate when performing the search
178:- `-v`, tells `grep` to print only those lines that do not match the pattern
179:- `-n`, tells `grep` to print the line numbers where the match occurs
182:[me@linuxbox ~]$ grep
The tee
program reads standard input and copies it to both standard output (allowing the data to continue down the pipeline) and to one or more files.
[me@linuxbox ~]$ ls | tee ls-output
Prints real and effective user and group IDs
[me@linuxbox ~]$ id
uid=500(me) gid=500(me) groups=500(me)