Category:Linux Command Line Tools

This category will contain information on Linux command line tools, which operate via a command line interface (or CLI; sometimes incorrectly referred to as the "Command Prompt").

A program that implements such interface is often called a command line interpreter or shell. Examples include the various Unix shells (sh, ksh, csh, tcsh, bash, etc.). All "tools" listed in this category would be executed via a shell.

Anatomy of a CLI

The commands given to a CLI are often of the form:

[doSomething] [how] [toFiles]

or

[doSomething] [how] [sourceFile] [destinationFile]

or

[doSomething] [how] < [inputFile] > [outputFile]

or

[doSomething] [how] | [doSomething] [how] | [do Something] [how] > [outputFile]

doSomething is, in effect, a verb, how an adverb (for example, should the command be executed "verbosely" or "quietly") and toFiles an object or objects (typically one or more files) on which the command should act. The '>' in the second example is a redirection operator, telling the command line interpreter to send the output of the command not to the screen but to the file named on the right of the '>'. Another redirection operator is the pipe ('|'), which tells the CLI to use the output of one command as the input to the next command; this "operator-stream" mechanism can be very powerful.