Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Options

Options that appear here with double hyphens also work when entered with single hyphens, but using double hyphens is standard coding procedure.

-, --

Treat all subsequent strings as arguments, not options.

-D, -- dump-strings

For execution in non-English locales, dump all strings that bash translates.

-- dump-po-strings

Same as -- dump-strings, but uses the GNU gettext po (portable object) format suitable for scripting.

-c str

Read commands from string str.

-- help

Print usage information and exit.

-i

Create an interactive shell (prompt for input).

-init-file file

Substitute file for .bashrc on startup.

-l, -- login

Behave like a login shell; try to process /etc/profile on startup. Then process ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile (searching for each file only if the previous file is not found).

-- noediting

Disable line editing with arrow and control keys.

-- noprofile

Don’t process /etc/profile, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile on startup.

-- norc

Don’t process ~/.bashrc on startup.

-- posix

Conform to POSIX standard.

-r, -- restricted

Restrict users to a very secure, limited environment; for instance, they can’t change out of the startup directory or use the > sign to redirect output.

-- rcfile file

Substitute file for .bashrc on startup.

-s

Read commands from standard input. Output from built-in commands goes to file descriptor 1; all other shell output goes to file descriptor 2.

-v, -- verbose

Print each line as it is executed (useful for tracing ...