Using csh & tcsh

Scope of This Handbook

This handbook is divided into three parts. Part I, Learning the Basics, is designed to get you off the ground by providing a basic introduction to the shell and a broad survey that shows how to use the shell's more advanced features to accomplish many different kinds of tasks.

Part II, Becoming More Efficient, provides a more topical approach to the shell's capabilities. The chapters in Part II focus on particular aspects of the shell. You'll find these chapters useful when you want more information about features of the shell that are demonstrated in Part I.

Part III contains the appendixes, which provide information about obtaining and installing tcsh, a quick reference to those shell capabilities discussed in this handbook, and pointers to other documentation relating to csh and tcsh.

Part I, Learning the Basics

Chapter 1, Introduction, discusses the purpose of the shell and describes how to change your login shell to one of those discussed in this handbook.

Chapter 2, A Shell Primer, provides a summary of introductory essentials. If you already know something about running commands, you can skim this chapter as a review or skip it.

Chapter 3, Using the Shell Effectively, is an overview of many of the facilities that the shell provides to help you work more efficiently—easy, practical ways to get more out of the command line. Often, even experienced users are not aware of all of these features. This chapter gives you a glimpse of the kinds of techniques that ...