| There are thousands of commands available on a typical unix box. In bash, just hit the "Tab" key twice and say yes, to display the the commands currently available on your machine. A standard unix operating system lists currently thousands of commands. Type x to list all commands starting with x. The following list contains some of the more frequently used programs. |
Access Control
|
| exit - terminate a shell (see "man sh" or "man csh") |
| logout - sign off; end session (C shell and bash shell only;) |
| passwd - change login password |
| rlogin - log in remotely to another UNIX system |
| ssh - secure shell |
| slogin - secure version of rlogin |
| yppasswd - change login password in yellow pages |
Communications
|
| mail - send and receive mail |
| mesg - permit or deny terminal messages and talk requests |
| pine - send and receive mail |
| talk - talk to another logged-in user |
| write - write to another logged-in user |
Documentation
|
| apropos - locate commands by keyword lookup |
| find - locate file (i.e. find . -name *.tex -print) |
| info - start the info explorer program |
| man - find manual information about commands |
| whatis - describe what a command is |
| whereis - locate source, binary, or man page for a program |
Editors
|
| emacs - screen-oriented text editor |
| pico - screen-oriented text editor (renamed called nano) |
| sed - stream-oriented text editor |
| vi - full-screen text editor |
| vim - full-screen text editor ("vi-improved") |
File and Directory Management
|
| cd - change working directory |
| chmod - change the protection of a file or directory |
| chown - change owner (or group) of a file or directory |
| chgrp - change group of a file or directory |
| cmp - compare two files |
| comm - select/reject lines common to two sorted files |
| cp - copy files |
| crypt - encrypt/decrypt files (CCWF only) |
| diff - compare the contents of two ASCII files |
| file - determine file type |
| grep - search a file for a pattern |
| gzip - compress or expand files |
| ln - make a link to a file |
| ls - list the contents of a directory |
| lsof - list of open files |
| mkdir - create a directory |
| mv - move or rename files and directories |
| pwd - show the full pathname of your working directory |
| quota - display disk usage and limits |
| rm - delete (remove) files |
| rmdir - delete (remove) directories |
| stat - status of file (i.e. last access) |
| sync - flush filesystem buffers |
| sort - sort or merge files |
| tar - create or extract archives |
| tee - copy input to standard output and other files |
| tr - translate characters |
| umask - change default file protections |
| uncompress - restore compressed file |
| uniq - report (or delete) repeated lines in a file |
| wc - count lines, words, and characters in a file |
File Display and Printing
|
| cat - show the contents of a file; catenate files |
| fold - fold long lines to fit output device |
| head - show first few lines of a file |
| lpq - examine the printer spooling queue |
| lpr - print a file |
| lprm - remove jobs from the printer spooling queue |
| more - display a file, one screen at a time |
| less - like more with more features |
| page - like "more", but prints screens top to bottom |
| pr - paginate a file for printing |
| tail - show the last part of a file |
| zcat - display a compressed file |
| xv - show print, manipulate images |
| gv - show ps and pdf files |
| xpdf = shopw pdf files (use gv) |
File Transfer
|
| ftp - transfer files between network hosts |
| rsync - fast and flexible sync between computers |
| scp - secure version of rcp |
Image Processing
|
| gimp - photoshop type image processing program |
| xfig - drawing program |
| xv - image viewer |
| xvscan - scan picture |
| xpaint - paint program |
| kpaint - kde paint program |
Miscellaneous
|
| alias - define synonym commands |
| chquota - change disk quota on ACITS UNIX systems |
| chsh - change default login shell |
| clear - clear terminal screen |
| echo - echo arguments |
| pbm - portable bitmap manipulation programs |
| popd - pop the directory stack (C shell only) |
| pushd - push directory on stack (C shell only) |
| script - make typescript of terminal session |
| setenv - set an environment variable (C shell only) |
| stty - set terminal options |
News/Networks
|
| netstat - show network status |
| rsh - run shell or command on another UNIX system |
| ssh - secure-shell version of rsh |
| Process Control |
| bg - put suspended process into background |
| fg - bring process into foreground |
| jobs - list processes |
| ^y - suspend process at next input request |
| ^z - suspend current process |
Programming Tools
|
| as - assembler, specific to each machine architecture |
| awk - pattern scanning and processing language |
| bc - online calculator |
| cc - C compiler |
| csh - C shell command interpreter |
| dbx - source-level debugging program |
| f77 - Fortran compiler |
| gdb - GNU Project debugger |
| gprof - display profile of called routines |
| kill - kill a process |
| ld - the UNIX loader |
| lex - generate lexical analysis programs |
| lint - check C source code |
| make - maintain large programs |
| maple - symbolic mathematics program |
| math - symbolic mathematics program |
| nice - run a command at low priority (see "man nice" or "man csh") |
| nohup - run a command immune to hangups |
| pc - Pascal compiler (xlp on ADS) |
| perl - Popular script interpreter |
| prof - display profile data |
| python - Python programming language |
| sh - Bourne shell command interpreter |
| yacc - generate input parsing programs |
| xcalc - graphical calulator under x |
Status Information
|
| clock - determine processor time |
| date - show date and time |
| df - summarize free disk space |
| du - summarize disk space used |
| env - display environment |
| finger - look up user information |
| history - list previously issued commands |
| last - indicate last login of users |
| lpq - examine spool queue |
| manpath - show search path for man pages |
| printenv - print out environment |
| ps - show process status |
| pwd - print full pathname of working directory |
| set - set shell variables (C shell, bash, or ksh) |
| spend - lists year-to-date ACITS UNIX charges |
| stty - set terminal options |
| time - timing programs |
| top - list top cpu processes |
| uptime - show system load, how long system has been up |
| w - show who is on system, what command each job is executing |
| who - show who is logged onto the system |
| whois - Internet user name directory service |
| whoami - who owns the shell |
Sound
|
| mplayer - mpg player |
| realplay - realaudio player |
| timidity - midi to wav converter and player |
| xmms - mp3 player |
Text Processing
|
| abiword - open source word processor |
| addbib - create or extend bibliographic database |
| col - filter reverse line feeds |
| diction - identify wordy sentences |
| diffmk - mark differences between files |
| dvips - convert TeX DVI files into PostScript |
| explain - explain phrases found by diction program |
| grap - pic preprocessor for drawing graphs |
| hyphen - find hyphenated words |
| ispell - check spelling interactively |
| latex - format text in LaTeX (based on TeX) |
| pdfelatex - latex with pdf output |
| latex2html - Latex to html |
| lookbib - find bibliography references |
| macref - make cross-reference listing of nroff/troff macro files |
| ndx - create a subject-page index for a document |
| neqn - format mathematics with nroff |
| nroff - format text for simple display |
| pic - make simple pictures for troff input |
| psdit - filter troff output for Apple LaserWriter |
| ptx - make permuted index (not on CCWF) |
| refer - insert references from bibliographic databases |
| roffbib - run off bibliographic database |
| sortbib - sort bibliographic database |
| spell - find spelling errors |
| ispell - interactive spell checker |
| style - analyze surface characteristics of a document |
| tbl - format tables for nroff/troff |
| tex - format text |
| tpic - convert pic source files into TeX commands |
| wget - grab webpage |
Web
|
| html2ps - html to ps |
| latex2html - latex to html translator |
| lynx - text based webbrowser |
| netscape - webbrowser |
| sitecopy - sitecopy is for easily maintaining remote web sites. |
| weblint - html sytax and style checker |
X windows
|
| grabmode - info on screen: i.e. "1152x864" 51.213kHz/56.59Hz |
| import - grab window (i.e. import ppm:- >out.ppm) |
| xdpyinfo - number of colors |
| xkill - kill xwindow |
| xlock - lock screen |
| xterm - xterminal |
| xwininfo - information on open window |
| Source: http://www.math.harvard.edu/computing/unix/unixcommands.html |
A List of UNIX Commands by Category
