Chapter 3. Introduction to the Command Line

File-Handling Utilities
mkdir, touch: Creating Empty Directories and Files
rm: Deleting Files or Directories
mv: Moving or Renaming Files
cp: Copying Files and Directories
Handling File Attributes
chown, chgrp: Change the Owner and Group of One or More Files
chmod: Changing Permissions on Files and Directories
Shell Globbing Patterns
Redirections and Pipes
A Little More About Processes
Redirections
Pipes
Command-Line Completion
Example
Other Completion Methods
Starting and Handling Background Processes: Job Control
A Final Word

In the chapter Chapter 1, Basic UNIX System Concepts, you were shown how to launch a shell. In this chapter, we will show you how to work with it.

The shell's main asset is the number of existing utilities: there are thousands of them, and each one is devoted to a particular task. We will only look at a (very) small number of them here. One of UNIX's greatest assets is the ability to combine these utilities, as we shall see later.