Learning Linux Shell Scripting

Working more effectively with shell – basic commands

Let us learn a few commands, which are required very often, such as man, echo, cat and similar:

• Enter the following command. It will show the various types of manual pages displayed by the man command:

  $ man man
  

  From the following table, you can get an idea about various types of man pages for the same command:

  Section number	Subject area
  1	User commands
  2	System calls
  3	Library calls
  4	Special files
  5	File formats
  6	Games
  7	Miscellaneous
  8	System admin
  9	Kernel routines

• We can enter the man command to display corresponding manual pages as follows:

  $ man 1 command
  $ man 5 command
  

• Suppose we need to know more about the passwd command, which is used for changing ...