Appendix A
Quick Guide to bash Commands
In This Appendix
- The bash built-in commands
- The GNU additional shell commands
- The bash environment variables
As you've seen throughout this book, the bash shell contains lots of features and thus has lots of commands available. This appendix provides a concise guide to allow you to quickly look up a feature or command that you can use from the bash command line or from a bash shell script.
Built-in Commands
The bash shell includes many popular commands built into the shell. This provides for faster processing times when using these commands. Table A.1 shows the built-in commands available directly from the bash shell.
Command | Description |
alias | Define an alias for the specified command. |
bg | Resume a job in background mode. |
bind | Bind a keyboard sequence to a readline function or macro. |
break | Exit from a for, while, select, or until loop. |
builtin | Execute the specified shell built-in command. |
cd | Change the current directory to the specified directory. |
caller | Return the context of any active subroutine call. |
command | Execute the specified command without the normal shell lookup. |
compgen | Generate possible completion matches for the specified word. |
complete | Display how the specified words would be completed. |
continue | Resume the next iteration of a for, while, select, or until loop. |
declare | Declare a variable or variable type. |
dirs | Display a list of currently remembered directories. |
disown | Remove ... |