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Linux in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition
book

Linux in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition

by Ellen Siever, Stephen Figgins, Aaron Weber
June 2003
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
944 pages
43h 1m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition

Syntax

This section describes the many symbols used by tcsh. The topics are arranged as follows:

  • Special files

  • Filename metacharacters

  • Quoting

  • Command forms

  • Redirection forms

Special Files

Filename

Description

~/.tcshrc or ~/.cshrc

Executed at each instance of shell startup. If no ~/.tcshrc is found, tcsh uses ~/.cshrc if present.

~/.login

Executed by login shell after .tcshrc at login.

~/.cshdirs

Executed by login shell after .login.

~/.logout

Executed by login shell at logout.

/etc/passwd

Source of home directories for ~ name abbreviations.

Filename Metacharacters

Characters

Meaning

*

Match any string of 0 or more characters.

?

Match any single character.

[ abc ...]

Match any one of the enclosed characters; a hyphen can be used to specify a range (e.g., a-z, A-Z, 0-9).

{ abc,xxx,...}

Expand each comma-separated string inside braces.

~

Home directory for the current user.

~ name

Home directory of user name.

Examples

% ls new*          
                  Match new and new.1
% cat ch?          
                  Match ch9 but not ch10
% vi [D-R]*        
                  Match files that begin with uppercase D through R
% ls {ch,app}?     
                  Expand, then match ch1, ch2, app1, app2
% cd ~tom          
                  Change to tom's home directory

Quoting

Quoting disables a character’s special meaning and allows it to be used literally, as itself. The characters in the following table have special meaning to tcsh.

Characters

Description

;

Command separator

&

Background execution

( )

Command grouping

|

Pipe

* ? [ ] ~

Filename metacharacters ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596004826