Bash fundamentals

An understanding of Bash starts with an understanding of Bash syntax. After you know the syntax, you can apply it to every Bash command you run.

The full syntax for a Bash command is:

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command [options] [arguments]

Bash treats the first string it encounters as a command. The following command uses Bash’s ls (for “list”) command to display the contents of the current working directory:

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ls

Arguments often accompany Bash commands. For example, you can include a path name in an ls command to list the contents of another directory:

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ls /etc

Most Bash commands have options for modifying how they work. Options, also called flags, give a command more specific instructions. As an example, files and directories whose names begin with a period are hidden from the user and aren’t displayed by ls. However, you can include the -a (for “all”) flag in an ls command and see everything in the target directory:

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ls -a /etc

You can even combine flags for brevity. For example, rather than enter ls -a -l /etc to show all files and directories in Linux’s /etc directory in long form, you can enter this instead:

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ls -al /etc

Bash is concise. It’s sometimes remarkable (and a point of pride among Bash aficionados) how much you can accomplish with a single command.

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