SH(1) General Commands Manual SH(1) NAME sh -- command interpreter (shell) SYNOPSIS sh [-/+abCEefIimnpsTuVvx] [-/+o longname] [-c string] [arg ...] DESCRIPTION The sh utility is the standard command interpreter for the system. The current version of sh is in the process of being changed to conform with the IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") specification for the shell. This version has many features which make it appear similar in some respects to the Korn shell, but it is not a Korn shell clone like pdksh(1). Only features des- ignated by POSIX, plus a few Berkeley extensions, are being incorporated into this shell. This man page is not intended to be a tutorial nor a com- plete specification of the shell. Overview The shell is a command that reads lines from either a file or the terminal, interprets them, and generally executes other commands. It is the program that is started when a user logs into the system, although a user can se- lect a different shell with the chsh(1) command. The shell implements a language that has flow control constructs, a macro facility that provides a variety of features in addition to data storage, along with builtin history and line editing capabilities. It incorporates many features to aid inter- active use and has the advantage that the interpretative language is common to both interactive and non-interactive use (shell scripts). That is, com- mands can be typed directly to the running shell or can be put into a file, which can be executed directly by the shell. Invocation If no arguments are present and if the standard input of the shell is con- nected to a terminal (or if the -i option is set), the shell is considered an interactive shell. An interactive shell generally prompts before each command and handles programming and command errors differently (as de- scribed below). When first starting, the shell inspects argument 0, and if it begins with a dash (-), the shell is also considered a login shell. This is normally done automatically by the system when the user first logs in. A login shell first reads commands from the files /etc/profile and then .profile if they exist. If the environment variable ENV is set on en- try to a shell, or is set in the .profile of a login shell, the shell then reads commands from the file named in ENV. Therefore, a user should place commands that are to be executed only at login time in the .profile file, and commands that are executed for every shell inside the ENV file. The user can set the ENV variable to some file by placing the following line in the file .profile in the home directory, substituting for .shinit the file- name desired: ENV=$HOME/.shinit; export ENV The first non-option argument specified on the command line will be treated as the name of a file from which to read commands (a shell script), and the remaining arguments are set as the positional parameters of the shell ($1, $2, etc). Otherwise, the shell reads commands from its standard input. Unlike older versions of sh the ENV script is only sourced on invocation of interactive shells. This closes a well-known, and sometimes easily ex- ploitable security hole related to poorly thought out ENV scripts. Argument List Processing All of the single letter options to sh have a corresponding long name, with the exception of -c and -/+o. These long names are provided next to the single letter options in the descriptions below. The long name for an op- tion may be specified as an argument to the -/+o option of sh(1). Once the shell is running, the long name for an option may be specified as an argu- ment to the -/+o option of the set builtin command (described later in the section called "Builtin Commands"). Introducing an option with a dash (-) enables the option, while using a plus (+) disables the option. A "--" or plain "-" will stop option processing and will force the remaining words on the command line to be treated as arguments. The -/+o and -c options do not have long names. They take arguments and are described after the sin- gle letter options. -a allexport Flag variables for export when assignments are made to them. -b notify Enable asynchronous notification of background job completion. (UNIMPLEMENTED) -C noclobber Do not overwrite existing files with ">". (UNIMPLEMENTED) -E emacs Enable the builtin emacs(1) command line editor (disables the -V option if it has been set). -e errexit Exit immediately if any untested command fails in non-interactive mode. The exit status of a command is considered to be explicitly tested if the command is used to control an if, elif, while, or un- til; or if the command is the left hand operand of an "&&" or "||" operator. -f noglob Disable pathname expansion. -I ignoreeof Ignore EOF's from input when in interactive mode. -i interactive Force the shell to behave interactively. -m monitor Turn on job control (set automatically when interactive). -n noexec If not interactive, read commands but do not execute them. This is useful for checking the syntax of shell scripts. -p privileged Turn on privileged mode. This mode is enabled on startup if either the effective user or group id is not equal to the real user or group id. Turning this mode off sets the effective user and group ids to the real user and group ids. When this mode is enabled for interactive shells, the file /etc/suid_profile is sourced instead of ~/.profile after /etc/profile is sourced, and the contents of the ENV variable are ignored. -s stdin Read commands from standard input (set automatically if no file ar- guments are present). This option has no effect when set after the shell has already started running (i.e. when set with the set com- mand). -T asynctraps When waiting for a child, execute traps immediately. If this op- tion is not set, traps are executed after the child exits, as spec- ified in IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") This nonstandard option is useful for putting guarding shells around children that block sig- nals. The surrounding shell may kill the child or it may just re- turn control to the tty and leave the child alone, like this: sh -T -c "trap 'exit 1' 2 ; some-blocking-program" -u nounset Write a message to standard error when attempting to expand a vari- able that is not set, and if the shell is not interactive, exit im- mediately. (UNIMPLEMENTED) -V vi Enable the builtin vi(1) command line editor (disables -E if it has been set). -v verbose The shell writes its input to standard error as it is read. Useful for debugging. -x xtrace Write each command (preceded by "+ ") to standard error before it is executed. Useful for debugging. The -c option may be used to pass its string argument to the shell to be interpreted as input. Keep in mind that this option only accepts a single string as its argument, hence multi-word strings must be quoted. The -/+o option takes as its only argument the long name of an option to be enabled or disabled. For example, the following two invocations of sh both enable the builtin emacs(1) command line editor: set -E set -o emacs Lexical Structure The shell reads input in terms of lines from a file and breaks it up into words at whitespace (blanks and tabs), and at certain sequences of charac- ters called "operators", which are special to the shell. There are two types of operators: control operators and redirection operators (their meaning is discussed later). The following is a list of valid operators: Control operators: & && ( ) \n ;; ; | || Redirection operators: < > << >> <& >& <<- >| Quoting Quoting is used to remove the special meaning of certain characters or words to the shell, such as operators, whitespace, or keywords. There are three types of quoting: matched single quotes, matched double quotes, and backslash. Single Quotes Enclosing characters in single quotes preserves the literal meaning of all the characters (except single quotes, making it impossible to put single-quotes in a single-quoted string). Double Quotes Enclosing characters within double quotes preserves the literal meaning of all characters except dollarsign ($), backquote (`), and backslash (\). The backslash inside double quotes is historically weird. It remains literal unless it precedes the following charac- ters, which it serves to quote: $ ` " \ \n Backslash A backslash preserves the literal meaning of the following charac- ter, with the exception of the newline character (\n). A backslash preceding a newline is treated as a line continuation. Reserved Words Reserved words are words that have special meaning to the shell and are recognized at the beginning of a line and after a control operator. The following are reserved words: ! { } case do done elif else esac fi for if then until while Aliases An alias is a name and corresponding value set using the alias builtin com- mand. Whenever a reserved word may occur (see above), and after checking for reserved words, the shell checks the word to see if it matches an alias. If it does, it replaces it in the input stream with its value. For example, if there is an alias called "lf" with the value "ls -F", then the input lf foobar would become ls -F foobar Aliases provide a convenient way for naive users to create shorthands for commands without having to learn how to create functions with arguments. They can also be used to create lexically obscure code. This use is dis- couraged. Commands The shell interprets the words it reads according to a language, the speci- fication of which is outside the scope of this man page (refer to the BNF in the IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") document). Essentially though, a line is read and if the first word of the line (or after a control operator) is not a reserved word, then the shell has recognized a simple command. Oth- erwise, a complex command or some other special construct may have been recognized. Simple Commands If a simple command has been recognized, the shell performs the following actions: 1. Leading words of the form "name=value" are stripped off and assigned to the environment of the simple command. Redirection operators and their arguments (as described below) are stripped off and saved for processing. 2. The remaining words are expanded as described in the section called "Word Expansions", and the first remaining word is considered the com- mand name and the command is located. The remaining words are consid- ered the arguments of the command. If no command name resulted, then the "name=value" variable assignments recognized in 1) affect the cur- rent shell. 3. Redirections are performed as described in the next section. Redirections Redirections are used to change where a command reads its input or sends its output. In general, redirections open, close, or duplicate an existing reference to a file. The overall format used for redirection is: [n] redir-op file The `redir-op' is one of the redirection operators mentioned previously. The following gives some examples of how these operators can be used. Note that stdin and stdout are commonly used abbreviations for standard input and standard output respectively. [n]> file redirect stdout (or file descriptor n) to file [n]>| file same as above, but override the -C option [n]>> file append stdout (or file descriptor n) to file [n]< file redirect stdin (or file descriptor n) from file [n1]<&n2 duplicate stdin (or file descriptor n1) from file de- scriptor n2 [n]<&- close stdin (or file descriptor n) [n1]>&n2 duplicate stdout (or file descriptor n1) to file de- scriptor n2 [n]>&- close stdout (or file descriptor n) The following redirection is often called a "here-document". [n]<< delimiter here-doc-text ... delimiter All the text on successive lines up to the delimiter is saved away and made available to the command on standard input, or file descriptor n if it is specified. If the delimiter as specified on the initial line is quoted, then the here-doc-text is treated literally, otherwise the text is sub- jected to parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expan- sion (as described in the section on "Word Expansions"). If the operator is "<<-" instead of "<<", then leading tabs in the here-doc-text are stripped. Search and Execution There are three types of commands: shell functions, builtin commands, and normal programs. The command is searched for (by name) in that order. The three types of commands are all executed in a different way. When a shell function is executed, all of the shell positional parameters (except $0, which remains unchanged) are set to the arguments of the shell function. The variables which are explicitly placed in the environment of the command (by placing assignments to them before the function name) are made local to the function and are set to the values given. Then the com- mand given in the function definition is executed. The positional parame- ters are restored to their original values when the command completes. This all occurs within the current shell. Shell builtin commands are executed internally to the shell, without spawn- ing a new process. Otherwise, if the command name does not match a function or builtin com- mand, the command is searched for as a normal program in the filesystem (as described in the next section). When a normal program is executed, the shell runs the program, passing the arguments and the environment to the program. If the program is not a normal executable file (i.e. if it does not begin with the "magic number" whose ASCII representation is "#!", re- sulting in an ENOEXEC return value from execve(2)) the shell will interpret the program in a subshell. The child shell will reinitialize itself in this case, so that the effect will be as if a new shell had been invoked to handle the ad-hoc shell script, except that the location of hashed commands located in the parent shell will be remembered by the child. Note that previous versions of this document and the source code itself misleadingly and sporadically refer to a shell script without a magic num- ber as a "shell procedure". Path Search When locating a command, the shell first looks to see if it has a shell function by that name. Then it looks for a builtin command by that name. If a builtin command is not found, one of two things happen: 1. Command names containing a slash are simply executed without perform- ing any searches. 2. The shell searches each entry in PATH in turn for the command. The value of the PATH variable should be a series of entries separated by colons. Each entry consists of a directory name. The current direc- tory may be indicated implicitly by an empty directory name, or ex- plicitly by a single period. Command Exit Status Each command has an exit status that can influence the behavior of other shell commands. The paradigm is that a command exits with zero for normal or success, and non-zero for failure, error, or a false indication. The man page for each command should indicate the various exit codes and what they mean. Additionally, the builtin commands return exit codes, as does an executed shell function. If a command is terminated by a signal, its exit status is 128 plus the signal number. Signal numbers are defined in the header file <sys/signal.h>. Complex Commands Complex commands are combinations of simple commands with control operators or reserved words, together creating a larger complex command. More gener- ally, a command is one of the following: simple command pipeline list or compound-list compound command function definition Unless otherwise stated, the exit status of a command is that of the last simple command executed by the command. Pipelines A pipeline is a sequence of one or more commands separated by the control operator |. The standard output of all but the last command is connected to the standard input of the next command. The standard output of the last command is inherited from the shell, as usual. The format for a pipeline is: [!] command1 [| command2 ...] The standard output of command1 is connected to the standard input of com- mand2. The standard input, standard output, or both of a command is con- sidered to be assigned by the pipeline before any redirection specified by redirection operators that are part of the command. If the pipeline is not in the background (discussed later), the shell waits for all commands to complete. If the reserved word ! does not precede the pipeline, the exit status is the exit status of the last command specified in the pipeline. Otherwise, the exit status is the logical NOT of the exit status of the last command. That is, if the last command returns zero, the exit status is 1; if the last command returns greater than zero, the exit status is zero. Because pipeline assignment of standard input or standard output or both takes place before redirection, it can be modified by redirection. For ex- ample: $ command1 2>&1 | command2 sends both the standard output and standard error of `command1' to the standard input of `command2'. A ";" or newline terminator causes the preceding AND-OR-list (described be- low in the section called "Short-Circuit List Operators") to be executed sequentially; an "&" causes asynchronous execution of the preceding AND-OR- list. Note that unlike some other shells, sh executes each process in the pipeline as a child of the sh process. Shell builtin commands are the ex- ception to this rule. They are executed in the current shell, although they do not affect its environment when used in pipelines. Background Commands (&) If a command is terminated by the control operator ampersand (&), the shell executes the command asynchronously; the shell does not wait for the com- mand to finish before executing the next command. The format for running a command in background is: command1 & [command2 & ...] If the shell is not interactive, the standard input of an asynchronous com- mand is set to /dev/null. Lists (Generally Speaking) A list is a sequence of zero or more commands separated by newlines, semi- colons, or ampersands, and optionally terminated by one of these three characters. The commands in a list are executed in the order they are written. If command is followed by an ampersand, the shell starts the com- mand and immediately proceed onto the next command; otherwise it waits for the command to terminate before proceeding to the next one. Short-Circuit List Operators "&&" and "||" are AND-OR list operators. "&&" executes the first command, and then executes the second command if the exit status of the first com- mand is zero. "||" is similar, but executes the second command if the exit status of the first command is nonzero. "&&" and "||" both have the same priority. Flow-Control Constructs (if, while, for, case) The syntax of the if command is: if list then list [elif list then list] ... [else list] fi The syntax of the while command is: while list do list done The two lists are executed repeatedly while the exit status of the first list is zero. The until command is similar, but has the word until in place of while, which causes it to repeat until the exit status of the first list is zero. The syntax of the for command is: for variable in word ... do list done The words are expanded, and then the list is executed repeatedly with the variable set to each word in turn. The do and done commands may be re- placed with "{" and "}". The syntax of the break and continue commands is: break [num] continue [num] The break command terminates the num innermost for or while loops. The continue command continues with the next iteration of the innermost loop. These are implemented as builtin commands. The syntax of the case command is case word in pattern) list ;; ... esac The pattern can actually be one or more patterns (see "Shell Patterns" de- scribed later), separated by "|" characters. Grouping Commands Together Commands may be grouped by writing either (list) or { list; } The first form executes the commands in a subshell. Note that builtin com- mands thus executed do not affect the current shell. The second form does not fork another shell, so it is slightly more efficient. Grouping com- mands together this way allows the user to redirect their output as though they were one program: { echo -n "hello"; echo " world"; } > greeting Functions The syntax of a function definition is name ( ) command A function definition is an executable statement; when executed it installs a function named name and returns an exit status of zero. The command is normally a list enclosed between "{" and "}". Variables may be declared to be local to a function by using the local com- mand. This should appear as the first statement of a function, and the syntax is: local [variable ...] [-] The local command is implemented as a builtin command. When a variable is made local, it inherits the initial value and exported and readonly flags from the variable with the same name in the surrounding scope, if there is one. Otherwise, the variable is initially unset. The shell uses dynamic scoping, so that if the variable x is made local to function f, which then calls function g, references to the variable x made inside g will refer to the variable x declared inside f, not to the global variable named x. The only special parameter than can be made local is "-". Making "-" local causes any shell options that are changed via the set command inside the function to be restored to their original values when the function returns. The syntax of the return command is return [exitstatus] It terminates the currently executing function. The return command is im- plemented as a builtin command. Variables and Parameters The shell maintains a set of parameters. A parameter denoted by a name is called a variable. When starting up, the shell turns all the environment variables into shell variables. New variables can be set using the form name=value Variables set by the user must have a name consisting solely of alphabet- ics, numerics, and underscores. The first letter of a variable name must not be numeric. A parameter can also be denoted by a number or a special character as explained below. Positional Parameters A positional parameter is a parameter denoted by a number greater than zero. The shell sets these initially to the values of its command line ar- guments that follow the name of the shell script. The set builtin command can also be used to set or reset them. Special Parameters A special parameter is a parameter denoted by one of the following special characters. The value of the parameter is listed next to its character. * Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one. When the expansion occurs within a double-quoted string it expands to a sin- gle field with the value of each parameter separated by the first character of the IFS variable, or by a <space> if IFS is unset. @ Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one. When the expansion occurs within double-quotes, each positional parameter expands as a separate argument. If there are no positional parame- ters, the expansion of @ generates zero arguments, even when @ is double-quoted. What this basically means, for example, is if $1 is "abc" and $2 is "def ghi", then "$@" expands to the two arguments: "abc" "def ghi" # Expands to the number of positional parameters. ? Expands to the exit status of the most recent pipeline. - (hyphen) Expands to the current option flags (the single-letter op- tion names concatenated into a string) as specified on invocation, by the set builtin command, or implicitly by the shell. $ Expands to the process ID of the invoked shell. A subshell retains the same value of $ as its parent. ! Expands to the process ID of the most recent background command ex- ecuted from the current shell. For a pipeline, the process ID is that of the last command in the pipeline. 0 (zero) Expands to the name of the shell or shell script. Word Expansions This clause describes the various expansions that are performed on words. Not all expansions are performed on every word, as explained later. Tilde expansions, parameter expansions, command substitutions, arithmetic expansions, and quote removals that occur within a single word expand to a single field. It is only field splitting or pathname expansion that can create multiple fields from a single word. The single exception to this rule is the expansion of the special parameter @ within double-quotes, as was described above. The order of word expansion is: 1. Tilde Expansion, Parameter Expansion, Command Substitution, Arithmetic Expansion (these all occur at the same time). 2. Field Splitting is performed on fields generated by step (1) unless the IFS variable is null. 3. Pathname Expansion (unless the -f option is in effect). 4. Quote Removal. The "$" character is used to introduce parameter expansion, command substi- tution, or arithmetic evaluation. Tilde Expansion (substituting a user's home directory) A word beginning with an unquoted tilde character (~) is subjected to tilde expansion. All the characters up to a slash (/) or the end of the word are treated as a username and are replaced with the user's home directory. If the username is missing (as in ~/foobar), the tilde is replaced with the value of the HOME variable (the current user's home directory). Parameter Expansion The format for parameter expansion is as follows: ${expression} where expression consists of all characters until the matching "}". Any "}" escaped by a backslash or within a quoted string, and characters in em- bedded arithmetic expansions, command substitutions, and variable expan- sions, are not examined in determining the matching "}". The simplest form for parameter expansion is: ${parameter} The value, if any, of parameter is substituted. The parameter name or symbol can be enclosed in braces, which are optional except for positional parameters with more than one digit or when parameter is followed by a character that could be interpreted as part of the name. If a parameter expansion occurs inside double-quotes: 1. Pathname expansion is not performed on the results of the expansion. 2. Field splitting is not performed on the results of the expansion, with the exception of the special parameter @. In addition, a parameter expansion can be modified by using one of the fol- lowing formats. ${parameter:-word} Use Default Values. If parameter is unset or null, the expansion of word is substituted; otherwise, the value of parameter is sub- stituted. ${parameter:=word} Assign Default Values. If parameter is unset or null, the expan- sion of word is assigned to parameter. In all cases, the final value of parameter is substituted. Only variables, not positional parameters or special parameters, can be assigned in this way. ${parameter:?[word]} Indicate Error if Null or Unset. If parameter is unset or null, the expansion of word (or a message indicating it is unset if word is omitted) is written to standard error and the shell exits with a nonzero exit status. Otherwise, the value of parameter is substi- tuted. An interactive shell need not exit. ${parameter:+word} Use Alternate Value. If parameter is unset or null, null is sub- stituted; otherwise, the expansion of word is substituted. In the parameter expansions shown previously, use of the colon in the format results in a test for a parameter that is unset or null; omission of the colon results in a test for a parameter that is only unset. ${#parameter} String Length. The length in characters of the value of parameter. The following four varieties of parameter expansion provide for substring processing. In each case, pattern matching notation (see "Shell Patterns"), rather than regular expression notation, is used to evaluate the patterns. If parameter is one of the special para- meters * or @, the result of the expansion is unspecified. Enclos- ing the full parameter expansion string in double-quotes does not cause the following four varieties of pattern characters to be quoted, whereas quoting characters within the braces has this ef- fect. ${parameter%word} Remove Smallest Suffix Pattern. The word is expanded to produce a pattern. The parameter expansion then results in parameter, with the smallest portion of the suffix matched by the pattern deleted. ${parameter%%word} Remove Largest Suffix Pattern. The word is expanded to produce a pattern. The parameter expansion then results in parameter, with the largest portion of the suffix matched by the pattern deleted. ${parameter#word} Remove Smallest Prefix Pattern. The word is expanded to produce a pattern. The parameter expansion then results in parameter, with the smallest portion of the prefix matched by the pattern deleted. ${parameter##word} Remove Largest Prefix Pattern. The word is expanded to produce a pattern. The parameter expansion then results in parameter, with the largest portion of the prefix matched by the pattern deleted. Command Substitution Command substitution allows the output of a command to be substituted in place of the command name itself. Command substitution occurs when the command is enclosed as follows: $(command) or the backquoted version: `command` The shell expands the command substitution by executing command in a sub- shell environment and replacing the command substitution with the standard output of the command, removing sequences of one or more newlines at the end of the substitution. Embedded newlines before the end of the output are not removed; however, during field splitting, they may be translated into spaces depending on the value of IFS and the quoting that is in ef- fect. Arithmetic Expansion Arithmetic expansion provides a mechanism for evaluating an arithmetic ex- pression and substituting its value. The format for arithmetic expansion is as follows: $((expression)) The expression is treated as if it were in double-quotes, except that a double-quote inside the expression is not treated specially. The shell ex- pands all tokens in the expression for parameter expansion, command substi- tution, and quote removal. Next, the shell treats this as an arithmetic expression and substitutes the value of the expression. White Space Splitting (Field Splitting) After parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion the shell scans the results of expansions and substitutions that did not occur in double-quotes for field splitting and multiple fields can result. The shell treats each character of the IFS as a delimiter and uses the de- limiters to split the results of parameter expansion and command substitu- tion into fields. Pathname Expansion (File Name Generation) Unless the -f option is set, file name generation is performed after word splitting is complete. Each word is viewed as a series of patterns, sepa- rated by slashes. The process of expansion replaces the word with the names of all existing files whose names can be formed by replacing each pattern with a string that matches the specified pattern. There are two restrictions on this: first, a pattern cannot match a string containing a slash, and second, a pattern cannot match a string starting with a period unless the first character of the pattern is a period. The next section describes the patterns used for both Pathname Expansion and the case com- mand. Shell Patterns A pattern consists of normal characters, which match themselves, and meta- characters. The meta-characters are ""!, "*", ""?, and "[". These charac- ters lose their special meanings if they are quoted. When command or vari- able substitution is performed and the dollar sign or back quotes are not double-quoted, the value of the variable or the output of the command is scanned for these characters and they are turned into meta-characters. An asterisk (*) matches any string of characters. A question mark ()? matches any single character. A left bracket ([) introduces a character class. The end of the character class is indicated by a "]"; if the "]" is missing then the "[" matches a "[" rather than introducing a character class. A character class matches any of the characters between the square brackets. A range of characters may be specified using a minus sign. The character class may be complemented by making an exclamation point ()! the first character of the character class. To include a "]" in a character class, make it the first character listed (after the ""!, if any). To include a "-", make it the first or last char- acter listed. Builtin Commands This section lists the commands which are builtin because they need to per- form some operation that can not be performed by a separate process. In addition to these, a builtin version of the printf(1) command is provided for efficiency. : A null command that returns a 0 (true) exit value. . file The commands in the specified file are read and executed by the shell. If file contains any "/" characters, it is used as is. Otherwise, the shell searches the PATH for the file. If it is not found in the PATH, it is sought in the current working directory. alias [name ...] alias [name=string ...] If name=string is specified, the shell defines the alias name with value string. If just name is specified, the value of the alias name is printed. With no arguments, the alias builtin command prints the names and values of all defined aliases (see unalias). bg [job ...] Continue the specified jobs (or the current job if no jobs are given) in the background. command cmd [arg ...] Execute the specified builtin command, cmd. This is useful when the user wishes to override a shell function with the same name as a builtin command. cd [directory] Switch to the specified directory, or to the directory specified in the HOME environment variable if no directory is specified. If directory is not found as a subdirectory of the current directory (and does not begin with "/", "./", or "../"), then the directories listed in the CDPATH variable will be searched for the specified directory. The format of CDPATH is the same as that of PATH. In an interactive shell, the cd command will print out the name of the directory that it actually switched to if this is different from the name that the user gave. These may be different either because the CDPATH mechanism was used or because a symbolic link was crossed. echo [-en] string Print string to the standard output with a newline appended. -n Suppress the output of the trailing newline. -e Process C-style backslash escape sequences. echo under- stands the following character escapes: \a Alert (ring the terminal bell) \b Backspace \c Suppress the trailing newline (this has the side- effect of truncating the line if it is not the last character) \e The ESC character (ASCII 0x1b) \f Formfeed \n Newline \r Carriage return \t Horizontal tab \v Vertical tab \\ Literal backslash \0nnn (Zero) The character whose octal value is nnn If string is not enclosed in quotes then the backslash it- self must be escaped with a backslash to protect it from the shell. For example $ echo -e "a\vb" a b $ echo -e a\\vb a b $ echo -e "a\\b" a\b $ echo -e a\\\\b a\b eval string ... Concatenate all the arguments with spaces. Then re-parse and exe- cute the command. exec [command [arg ...]] Unless command is omitted, the shell process is replaced with the specified program (which must be a real program, not a shell builtin command or function). Any redirections on the exec command are marked as permanent, so that they are not undone when the exec command finishes. exit [exitstatus] Terminate the shell process. If exitstatus is given it is used as the exit status of the shell; otherwise the exit status of the pre- ceding command is used. export name ... The specified names are exported so that they will appear in the environment of subsequent commands. The only way to un-export a variable is to unset it. The shell allows the value of a variable to be set at the same time as it is exported by writing export name=value With no arguments the export command lists the names of all ex- ported variables. fc [-e editor] [first [last]] fc -l [-nr] [first [last]] fc -s [old=new] [first] The fc builtin command lists, or edits and re-executes, commands previously entered to an interactive shell. -e editor Use the editor named by editor to edit the commands. The editor string is a command name, subject to search via the PATH variable. The value in the FCEDIT variable is used as a default when -e is not specified. If FCEDIT is null or unset, the value of the EDITOR variable is used. If EDITOR is null or unset, ed(1) is used as the editor. -l (ell) List the commands rather than invoking an editor on them. The commands are written in the sequence indicated by the first and last operands, as affected by -r, with each com- mand preceded by the command number. -n Suppress command numbers when listing with -l. -r Reverse the order of the commands listed (with -l) or edited (with neither -l nor -s). -s Re-execute the command without invoking an editor. first last Select the commands to list or edit. The number of previ- ous commands that can be accessed are determined by the value of the HISTSIZE variable. The value of first or last or both are one of the following: [+]num A positive number representing a command number; command numbers can be displayed with the -l op- tion. -num A negative decimal number representing the command that was executed num of commands previously. For example, -1 is the immediately previous command. string A string indicating the most recently entered com- mand that begins with that string. If the old=new operand is not also specified with -s, the string form of the first operand cannot contain an embed- ded equal sign. The following environment variables affect the execution of fc: FCEDIT Name of the editor to use. HISTSIZE The number of previous commands that are accessible. fg [job] Move the specified job or the current job to the foreground. getopts optstring var The POSIX getopts command. The getopts command deprecates the older getopt(1) command. The first argument should be a series of letters, each possibly followed by a colon which indicates that the option takes an argument. The specified variable is set to the parsed option. The index of the next argument is placed into the shell variable OPTIND. If an option takes an argument, it is placed into the shell variable OPTARG. If an invalid option is en- countered, var is set to ""?. It returns a false value (1) when it encounters the end of the options. hash [-rv] [command ...] The shell maintains a hash table which remembers the locations of commands. With no arguments whatsoever, the hash command prints out the contents of this table. Entries which have not been looked at since the last cd command are marked with an asterisk; it is possible for these entries to be invalid. With arguments, the hash command removes each specified command from the hash table (unless they are functions) and then locates it. With the -v option, hash prints the locations of the commands as it finds them. The -r option causes the hash command to delete all the entries in the hash table except for functions. jobid [job] Print the process id's of the processes in the specified job. If the job argument is omitted, use the current job. jobs This command lists out all the background processes which are chil- dren of the current shell process. pwd Print the path of the current directory. The builtin command may differ from the program of the same name because the builtin com- mand remembers what the current directory is rather than recomput- ing it each time. This makes it faster. However, if the current directory is renamed, the builtin version of pwd(1) will continue to print the old name for the directory. read [-p prompt] [-t timeout] [-er] variable ... The prompt is printed if the -p option is specified and the stan- dard input is a terminal. Then a line is read from the standard input. The trailing newline is deleted from the line and the line is split as described in the section on "White Space Splitting (Field Splitting)" above, and the pieces are assigned to the vari- ables in order. If there are more pieces than variables, the re- maining pieces (along with the characters in IFS that separated them) are assigned to the last variable. If there are more vari- ables than pieces, the remaining variables are assigned the null string. Backslashes are treated specially, unless the -r option is speci- fied. If a backslash is followed by a newline, the backslash and the newline will be deleted. If a backslash is followed by any other character, the backslash will be deleted and the following character will be treated as though it were not in IFS, even if it is. If the -t option is specified and the timeout elapses before any input is supplied, the read command will return without assigning any values. The timeout value may optionally be followed by one of "s", "m" or "h" to explicitly specify seconds, minutes or or hours. If none is supplied, "s" is assumed. The -e option exists only for backward compatibility with older scripts. readonly name ... Each specified name is marked as read only, so that it cannot be subsequently modified or unset. The shell allows the value of a variable to be set at the same time as it is marked read only by using the following form: readonly name=value With no arguments the readonly command lists the names of all read only variables. set [-/+abCEefIimnpTuVvx] [-/+o longname] [-c string] [-- arg ...] The set command performs three different functions: With no arguments, it lists the values of all shell variables. If options are given, either in short form or using the long "-/+o longname" form, it sets or clears the specified options as de- scribed in the section called "Argument List Processing". If the "--" option is specified, set will replace the shell's posi- tional parameters with the subsequent arguments. If no arguments follow the "--" option, all the positional parameters will be cleared, which is equivalent to executing the command "shift $#". The "--" flag may be ommitted when specifying arguments to be used as positional replacement parameters. This is not recommended, be- cause the first argument may begin with a dash (-) or a plus (+), which the set command will interpret as a request to enable or dis- able options. setvar variable value Assigns the specified value to the specified variable. Setvar is intended to be used in functions that assign values to variables whose names are passed as parameters. In general it is better to write variable=value rather than using setvar. shift [n] Shift the positional parameters n times, or once if n is not speci- fied. A shift sets the value of $1 to the value of $2, the value of $2 to the value of $3, and so on, decreasing the value of $# by one. If there are zero positional parameters, shifting does not do anything. trap [action] signal ... Cause the shell to parse and execute action when any specified signal is received. The signals are specified by signal number. The action may be null or omitted; the former causes the specified signal to be ignored and the latter causes the default action to be taken. When the shell forks off a subshell, it resets trapped (but not ignored) signals to the default action. The trap command has no effect on signals that were ignored on entry to the shell. type [name ...] Interpret each name as a command and print the resolution of the command search. Possible resolutions are: shell keyword, alias, shell builtin command, command, tracked alias and not found. For aliases the alias expansion is printed; for commands and tracked aliases the complete pathname of the command is printed. ulimit [-HSabcdflmnust] [limit] Set or display resource limits (see getrlimit(2)). If limit is specified, the named resource will be set; otherwise the current resource value will be displayed. If -H is specified, the hard limits will be set or displayed. While everybody is allowed to reduce a hard limit, only the supe- ruser can increase it. The -S option specifies the soft limits in- stead. When displaying limits, only one of -S or -H can be given. The default is to display the soft limits, and to set both the hard and the soft limits. Option -a causes the ulimit command to display all resources. The parameter limit is not acceptable in this mode. The remaining options specify which resource value is to be dis- played or modified. They are mutually exclusive. -b sbsize The maximum size of socket buffer usage, in bytes. -c coredumpsize The maximal size of core dump files, in 512-byte blocks. -d datasize The maximal size of the data segment of a process, in kilo- bytes. -f filesize The maximal size of a file, in 512-byte blocks. -l lockedmem The maximal size of memory that can be locked by a process, in kilobytes. -m memoryuse The maximal resident set size of a process, in kilobytes. -n nofiles The maximal number of descriptors that could be opened by a process. -s stacksize The maximal size of the stack segment, in kilobytes. -t time The maximal amount of CPU time to be used by each process, in seconds. -u userproc The maximal number of simultaneous processes for this user ID. umask [mask] Set the file creation mask (see umask(2)) to the octal value speci- fied by mask. If the argument is omitted, the current mask value is printed. unalias [-a] [name] If name is specified, the shell removes that alias. If -a is spec- ified, all aliases are removed. unset name ... The specified variables and functions are unset and unexported. If a given name corresponds to both a variable and a function, both the variable and the function are unset. wait [job] Wait for the specified job to complete and return the exit status of the last process in the job. If the argument is omitted, wait for all jobs to complete and return an exit status of zero. Commandline Editing When sh is being used interactively from a terminal, the current command and the command history (see fc in "Builtin Commands") can be edited using vi-mode command line editing. This mode uses commands similar to a subset of those described in the vi man page. The command "set -o vi" (or "set -V") enables vi-mode editing and places sh into vi insert mode. With vi- mode enabled, sh can be switched between insert mode and command mode by typing <ESC>. Hitting <return> while in command mode will pass the line to the shell. Similarly, the "set -o emacs" (or "set -E") command can be used to enable a subset of emacs-style command line editing features. SEE ALSO builtin(1), echo(1), expr(1), pwd(1), printf(1), test(1) HISTORY A sh command appeared in AT&T System V Release 1 UNIX. 4th Berkeley Distribution May 5, 1995 SH(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | HISTORY
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