Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Terms

Escape sequence A special sequence of characters that represents another character.

File descriptor An integer that is associated with a file. Enables you to read and write from a file using the integer instead of the file's name.

Input redirection In UNIX, the process of sending input to a command from a file.

Output redirection In UNIX, the process of capturing the output of a command and storing it in a file. It redirects the output of a command into a file instead of the screen.

STDERR Standard Error. A special type of output used for error messages. The file descriptor for STDERR is 2.

STDIN Standard Input. User input is read from STDIN. The file descriptor for STDIN is 0.

STDOUT Standard Output. The output of scripts is usually to ...