UNIX® Shells by Example, Third Edition

11.1. Introduction

With an interactive shell, the standard input, output, and error are tied to a terminal. When using the Bourne Again (bash) shell interactively, you type UNIX commands at the bash prompt and wait for a response. Bash provides you with a large assortment of built-in commands and command line shortcuts, such as history, aliases, file and command completion, command line editing, and many more. Some of the features were present in the standard UNIX Bourne shell but the GNU project has expanded the shell to include a number of new features as well adding POSIX compliancy. With the release of bash 2.x, so many features of the UNIX Korn shell and C shell have been included that the bash shell is a fully functional shell at both the ...