bash - GNU Bourne-Again SHell
bash [options] [file]
Bash is Copyright (C) 1989-2005 by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Bash is an sh-compatible command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard input or from a file. Bash also incorporates useful features from the Korn and C shells (ksh and csh).
Bash is intended to be a conformant implementation of the IEEE POSIX Shell and Tools specification (IEEE Working Group 1003.2). Bash can be configured to be POSIX-conformant by default.
In addition to the single-character shell options documented in the description of the set builtin command, bash interprets the following options when it is invoked:
Bash also interprets a number of multi-character options. These options must appear on the command line before the single-character options to be recognized.
If arguments remain after option processing, and neither the -c nor the -s option has been supplied, the first argument is assumed to be the name of a file containing shell commands. If bash is invoked in this fashion, $0 is set to the name of the file, and the positional parameters are set to the remaining arguments. Bash reads and executes commands from this file, then exits. Bash’s exit status is the exit status of the last command executed in the script. If no commands are executed, the exit status is 0. An attempt is first made to open the file in the current directory, and, if no file is found, then the shell searches the directories in PATH for the script.
A login shell is one whose first character of argument zero is a -, or one started with the --login option.
An interactive shell is one started without non-option arguments and without the -c option whose standard input and error are both connected to terminals (as determined by isatty(3) ), or one started with the -i option. PS1 is set and $- includes i if bash is interactive, allowing a shell script or a startup file to test this state.
The following paragraphs describe how bash executes its startup files. If any of the files exist but cannot be read, bash reports an error. Tildes are expanded in file names as described below under Tilde Expansion in the EXPANSION section.
When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.
When a login shell exits, bash reads and executes commands from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.
When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists. This may be inhibited by using the --norc option. The --rcfile file option will force bash to read and execute commands from file instead of ~/.bashrc.
When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script, for
example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment, expands
its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value as the name
of a file to read and execute. Bash behaves as if the following command
were executed:
if [ -n “$BASH_ENV” ]; then . “$BASH_ENV"; fi
but the value of the PATH variable is not used to search for the file
name.
If bash is invoked with the name sh, it tries to mimic the startup behavior of historical versions of sh as closely as possible, while conforming to the POSIX standard as well. When invoked as an interactive login shell, or a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first attempts to read and execute commands from /etc/profile and ~/.profile, in that order. The --noprofile option may be used to inhibit this behavior. When invoked as an interactive shell with the name sh, bash looks for the variable ENV, expands its value if it is defined, and uses the expanded value as the name of a file to read and execute. Since a shell invoked as sh does not attempt to read and execute commands from any other startup files, the --rcfile option has no effect. A non-interactive shell invoked with the name sh does not attempt to read any other startup files. When invoked as sh, bash enters posix mode after the startup files are read.
When bash is started in posix mode, as with the --posix command line option, it follows the POSIX standard for startup files. In this mode, interactive shells expand the ENV variable and commands are read and executed from the file whose name is the expanded value. No other startup files are read.
Bash attempts to determine when it is being run by the remote shell daemon, usually rshd. If bash determines it is being run by rshd, it reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists and is readable. It will not do this if invoked as sh. The --norc option may be used to inhibit this behavior, and the --rcfile option may be used to force another file to be read, but rshd does not generally invoke the shell with those options or allow them to be specified.
If the shell is started with the effective user (group) id not equal to the real user (group) id, and the -p option is not supplied, no startup files are read, shell functions are not inherited from the environment, the SHELLOPTS variable, if it appears in the environment, is ignored, and the effective user id is set to the real user id. If the -p option is supplied at invocation, the startup behavior is the same, but the effective user id is not reset.
The following definitions are used throughout the rest of this document.
blank A space or tab.
word A sequence of characters considered as a single unit by the
shell. Also known as a token.
name A word consisting only of alphanumeric characters and underscores,
and beginning with an alphabetic character or an underscore.
Also referred to as an identifier.
metacharacter
A character that, when unquoted, separates words. One of the
following:
| & ; ( ) < > space tab
control operator
A token that performs a control function. It is one of the following
symbols:
|| & && ; ;; ( ) | <newline>
Reserved words are words that have a special meaning to the shell. The following words are recognized as reserved when unquoted and either the first word of a simple command (see SHELL GRAMMAR below) or the third word of a case or for command:
! case do done elif else esac fi for function if in select then until while { } time [[ ]]
Simple Commands
A simple command is a sequence of optional variable assignments followed
by blank-separated words and redirections, and terminated by a
control operator. The first word specifies the command to be executed,
and is passed as argument zero. The remaining words are passed as
arguments to the invoked command.
The return value of a simple command is its exit status, or 128+n if the command is terminated by signal n.
Pipelines
A pipeline is a sequence of one or more commands separated by the character
|. The format for a pipeline is:
[time [-p]] [ ! ] command [ | command2 ... ]
The standard output of command is connected via a pipe to the standard input of command2. This connection is performed before any redirections specified by the command (see REDIRECTION below).
The return status of a pipeline is the exit status of the last command, unless the pipefail option is enabled. If pipefail is enabled, the pipeline’s return status is the value of the last (rightmost) command to exit with a non-zero status, or zero if all commands exit successfully. If the reserved word ! precedes a pipeline, the exit status of that pipeline is the logical negation of the exit status as described above. The shell waits for all commands in the pipeline to terminate before returning a value.
If the time reserved word precedes a pipeline, the elapsed as well as user and system time consumed by its execution are reported when the pipeline terminates. The -p option changes the output format to that specified by POSIX. The TIMEFORMAT variable may be set to a format string that specifies how the timing information should be displayed; see the description of TIMEFORMAT under Shell Variables below.
Each command in a pipeline is executed as a separate process (i.e., in a subshell).
Lists
A list is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by one of the
operators ;, &, &&, or ||, and optionally terminated by one of ;, &, or
<newline>.
Of these list operators, && and || have equal precedence, followed by ; and &, which have equal precedence.
A sequence of one or more newlines may appear in a list instead of a semicolon to delimit commands.
If a command is terminated by the control operator &, the shell executes the command in the background in a subshell. The shell does not wait for the command to finish, and the return status is 0. Commands separated by a ; are executed sequentially; the shell waits for each command to terminate in turn. The return status is the exit status of the last command executed.
The control operators && and || denote AND lists and OR lists, respectively. An AND list has the form
command1 && command2
command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns an exit status of zero.
An OR list has the form
command1 || command2
command2 is executed if and only if command1 returns a non-zero exit status. The return status of AND and OR lists is the exit status of the last command executed in the list.
Compound Commands
A compound command is one of the following:
(list) list is executed in a subshell environment (see COMMAND EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT below). Variable assignments and builtin commands that affect the shell’s environment do not remain in effect after the command completes. The return status is the exit status of list.
{ list; }
list is simply executed in the current shell environment. list
must be terminated with a newline or semicolon. This is known
as a group command. The return status is the exit status of
list. Note that unlike the metacharacters ( and ), { and } are
reserved words and must occur where a reserved word is permitted
to be recognized. Since they do not cause a word break, they
must be separated from list by whitespace.
((expression))
The expression is evaluated according to the rules described
below under ARITHMETIC EVALUATION. If the value of the
expression is non-zero, the return status is 0; otherwise the
return status is 1. This is exactly equivalent to let “expres_sion".
[[ expression ]]
Return a status of 0 or 1 depending on the evaluation of the
conditional expression expression. Expressions are composed of
the primaries described below under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS.
Word splitting and pathname expansion are not performed on the
words between the [[ and ]]; tilde expansion, parameter and
variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, command substitution,
process substitution, and quote removal are performed. Conditional
operators such as -f must be unquoted to be recognized as
primaries.
When the == and != operators are used, the string to the right of the operator is considered a pattern and matched according to the rules described below under Pattern Matching. If the shell option nocasematch is enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of alphabetic characters. The return value is 0 if the string matches (==) or does not match (!=) the pattern, and 1 otherwise. Any part of the pattern may be quoted to force it to be matched as a string.
An additional binary operator, =~, is available, with the same precedence as == and !=. When it is used, the string to the right of the operator is considered an extended regular expression and matched accordingly (as in regex(3) ). The return value is 0 if the string matches the pattern, and 1 otherwise. If the regular expression is syntactically incorrect, the conditional expression’s return value is 2. If the shell option nocasematch is enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of alphabetic characters. Substrings matched by parenthesized subexpressions within the regular expression are saved in the array variable BASH_REMATCH. The element of BASH_REMATCH with index 0 is the portion of the string matching the entire regular expression. The element of BASH_REMATCH with index n is the portion of the string matching the nth parenthesized subexpression.
Expressions may be combined using the following operators, listed in decreasing order of precedence:
( expression )
Returns the value of expression. This may be used to
override the normal precedence of operators.
! expression
True if expression is false.
expression1 && expression2
True if both expression1 and expression2 are true.
expression1 || expression2
True if either expression1 or expression2 is true.
The && and || operators do not evaluate expression2 if the value of expression1 is sufficient to determine the return value of the entire conditional expression.
for name [ in word ] ; do list ; done The list of words following in is expanded, generating a list of items. The variable name is set to each element of this list in turn, and list is executed each time. If the in word is omitted, the for command executes list once for each positional parameter that is set (see PARAMETERS below). The return status is the exit status of the last command that executes. If the expansion of the items following in results in an empty list, no commands are executed, and the return status is 0.
for (( expr1 ; expr2 ; expr3 )) ; do list ; done First, the arithmetic expression expr1 is evaluated according to the rules described below under ARITHMETIC EVALUATION. The arithmetic expression expr2 is then evaluated repeatedly until it evaluates to zero. Each time expr2 evaluates to a non-zero value, list is executed and the arithmetic expression expr3 is evaluated. If any expression is omitted, it behaves as if it evaluates to 1. The return value is the exit status of the last command in list that is executed, or false if any of the expressions is invalid.
select name [ in word ] ; do list ; done The list of words following in is expanded, generating a list of items. The set of expanded words is printed on the standard error, each preceded by a number. If the in word is omitted, the positional parameters are printed (see PARAMETERS below). The PS3 prompt is then displayed and a line read from the standard input. If the line consists of a number corresponding to one of the displayed words, then the value of name is set to that word. If the line is empty, the words and prompt are displayed again. If EOF is read, the command completes. Any other value read causes name to be set to null. The line read is saved in the variable REPLY. The list is executed after each selection until a break command is executed. The exit status of select is the exit status of the last command executed in list, or zero if no commands were executed.
case word in [ [(] pattern [ | pattern ] ... ) list ;; ] ... esac A case command first expands word, and tries to match it against each pattern in turn, using the same matching rules as for pathname expansion (see Pathname Expansion below). The word is expanded using tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic substituion, command substitution, process substitution and quote removal. Each pattern examined is expanded using tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic substituion, command substitution, and process substitution. If the shell option nocasematch is enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of alphabetic characters. When a match is found, the corresponding list is executed. After the first match, no subsequent matches are attempted. The exit status is zero if no pattern matches. Otherwise, it is the exit status of the last command executed in list.
if list; then list; [ elif list; then list; ] ... [ else list; ] fi The if list is executed. If its exit status is zero, the then list is executed. Otherwise, each elif list is executed in turn, and if its exit status is zero, the corresponding then list is executed and the command completes. Otherwise, the else list is executed, if present. The exit status is the exit status of the last command executed, or zero if no condition tested true.
while list; do list; done
until list; do list; done
The while command continuously executes the do list as long as
the last command in list returns an exit status of zero. The
until command is identical to the while command, except that the
test is negated; the do list is executed as long as the last
command in list returns a non-zero exit status. The exit status
of the while and until commands is the exit status of the last
do list command executed, or zero if none was executed.
Shell Function Definitions
A shell function is an object that is called like a simple command and
executes a compound command with a new set of positional parameters.
Shell functions are declared as follows:
[ function ] name () compound-command [redirection] This defines a function named name. The reserved word function is optional. If the function reserved word is supplied, the parentheses are optional. The body of the function is the compound command compound-command (see Compound Commands above). That command is usually a list of commands between { and }, but may be any command listed under Compound Commands above. com_pound-command is executed whenever name is specified as the name of a simple command. Any redirections (see REDIRECTION below) specified when a function is defined are performed when the function is executed. The exit status of a function definition is zero unless a syntax error occurs or a readonly function with the same name already exists. When executed, the exit status of a function is the exit status of the last command executed in the body. (See FUNCTIONS below.)
In a non-interactive shell, or an interactive shell in which the interactive_comments option to the shopt builtin is enabled (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below), a word beginning with # causes that word and all remaining characters on that line to be ignored. An interactive shell without the interactive_comments option enabled does not allow comments. The interactive_comments option is on by default in interactive shells.
Quoting is used to remove the special meaning of certain characters or words to the shell. Quoting can be used to disable special treatment for special characters, to prevent reserved words from being recognized as such, and to prevent parameter expansion.
Each of the metacharacters listed above under DEFINITIONS has special meaning to the shell and must be quoted if it is to represent itself.
When the command history expansion facilities are being used (see HISTORY EXPANSION below), the history expansion character, usually !, must be quoted to prevent history expansion.
There are three quoting mechanisms: the escape character, single quotes, and double quotes.
A non-quoted backslash (\) is the escape character. It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception of <newline>. If a \<newline> pair appears, and the backslash is not itself quoted, the \<newline> is treated as a line continuation (that is, it is removed from the input stream and effectively ignored).
Enclosing characters in single quotes preserves the literal value of each character within the quotes. A single quote may not occur between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash.
Enclosing characters in double quotes preserves the literal value of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of $, ‘, \, and, when history expansion is enabled, !. The characters $ and ‘ retain their special meaning within double quotes. The backslash retains its special meaning only when followed by one of the following characters: $, ‘, “, \, or <newline>. A double quote may be quoted within double quotes by preceding it with a backslash. If enabled, history expansion will be performed unless an ! appearing in double quotes is escaped using a backslash. The backslash preceding the ! is not removed.
The special parameters * and @ have special meaning when in double quotes (see PARAMETERS below).
Words of the form $’string’ are treated specially. The word expands to
string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the
ANSI C standard. Backslash escape sequences, if present, are decoded
as follows:
The expanded result is single-quoted, as if the dollar sign had not been present.
A double-quoted string preceded by a dollar sign ($) will cause the string to be translated according to the current locale. If the current locale is C or POSIX, the dollar sign is ignored. If the string is translated and replaced, the replacement is double-quoted.
A parameter is an entity that stores values. It can be a name, a number, or one of the special characters listed below under Special Parameters. A variable is a parameter denoted by a name. A variable has a value and zero or more attributes. Attributes are assigned using the declare builtin command (see declare below in SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS).
A parameter is set if it has been assigned a value. The null string is a valid value. Once a variable is set, it may be unset only by using the unset builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
A variable may be assigned to by a statement of the form
name=[value]
If value is not given, the variable is assigned the null string. All values undergo tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal (see EXPANSION below). If the variable has its integer attribute set, then value is evaluated as an arithmetic expression even if the $((...)) expansion is not used (see Arithmetic Expansion below). Word splitting is not performed, with the exception of “$@” as explained below under Special Parameters. Pathname expansion is not performed. Assignment statements may also appear as arguments to the alias, declare, typeset, export, readonly, and local builtin commands.
In the context where an assignment statement is assigning a value to a shell variable or array index, the += operator can be used to append to or add to the variable’s previous value. When += is applied to a variable for which the integer attribute has been set, value is evaluated as an arithmetic expression and added to the variable’s current value, which is also evaluated. When += is applied to an array variable using compound assignment (see Arrays below), the variable’s value is not unset (as it is when using =), and new values are appended to the array beginning at one greater than the array’s maximum index. When applied to a string-valued variable, value is expanded and appended to the variable’s value.
Positional Parameters
A positional parameter is a parameter denoted by one or more digits,
other than the single digit 0. Positional parameters are assigned from
the shell’s arguments when it is invoked, and may be reassigned using
the set builtin command. Positional parameters may not be assigned to
with assignment statements. The positional parameters are temporarily
replaced when a shell function is executed (see FUNCTIONS below).
When a positional parameter consisting of more than a single digit is expanded, it must be enclosed in braces (see EXPANSION below).
Special Parameters
The shell treats several parameters specially. These parameters may
only be referenced; assignment to them is not allowed.
Shell Variables
The following variables are set by the shell:
BASH Expands to the full file name used to invoke this instance of
bash.
BASH_ARGC
An array variable whose values are the number of parameters in
each frame of the current bash execution call stack. The number
of parameters to the current subroutine (shell function or
script executed with . or source) is at the top of the stack.
When a subroutine is executed, the number of parameters passed
is pushed onto BASH_ARGC. The shell sets BASH_ARGC only when in
extended debugging mode (see the description of the extdebug
option to the shopt builtin below)
BASH_ARGV
An array variable containing all of the parameters in the current
bash execution call stack. The final parameter of the last
subroutine call is at the top of the stack; the first parameter
of the initial call is at the bottom. When a subroutine is executed,
the parameters supplied are pushed onto BASH_ARGV. The
shell sets BASH_ARGV only when in extended debugging mode (see
the description of the extdebug option to the shopt builtin
below)
BASH_COMMAND
The command currently being executed or about to be executed,
unless the shell is executing a command as the result of a trap,
in which case it is the command executing at the time of the
trap.
BASH_EXECUTION_STRING
The command argument to the -c invocation option.
BASH_LINENO
An array variable whose members are the line numbers in source
files corresponding to each member of FUNCNAME.
${BASH_LINENO[$i]} is the line number in the source file where
${FUNCNAME[$ifP]} was called. The corresponding source file
name is ${BASH_SOURCE[$i]}. Use LINENO to obtain the current
line number.
BASH_REMATCH
An array variable whose members are assigned by the =~ binary
operator to the [[ conditional command. The element with index
0 is the portion of the string matching the entire regular
expression. The element with index n is the portion of the
string matching the nth parenthesized subexpression. This variable
is read-only.
BASH_SOURCE
An array variable whose members are the source filenames corresponding
to the elements in the FUNCNAME array variable.
BASH_SUBSHELL
Incremented by one each time a subshell or subshell environment
is spawned. The initial value is 0.
BASH_VERSINFO
A readonly array variable whose members hold version information
for this instance of bash. The values assigned to the array
members are as follows:
EUID Expands to the effective user ID of the current user, initialized at shell startup. This variable is readonly.
GROUPS An array variable containing the list of groups of which the current user is a member. Assignments to GROUPS have no effect and return an error status. If GROUPS is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
LINENO Each time this parameter is referenced, the shell substitutes a decimal number representing the current sequential line number (starting with 1) within a script or function. When not in a script or function, the value substituted is not guaranteed to be meaningful. If LINENO is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
OLDPWD The previous working directory as set by the cd command.
OPTARG The value of the last option argument processed by the getopts builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
OPTIND The index of the next argument to be processed by the getopts builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
OSTYPE Automatically set to a string that describes the operating system on which bash is executing. The default is system-dependent.
PPID The process ID of the shell’s parent. This variable is readonly.
RANDOM Each time this parameter is referenced, a random integer between 0 and 32767 is generated. The sequence of random numbers may be initialized by assigning a value to RANDOM. If RANDOM is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
REPLY Set to the line of input read by the read builtin command when no arguments are supplied.
SHLVL Incremented by one each time an instance of bash is started.
The following variables are used by the shell. In some cases, bash assigns a default value to a variable; these cases are noted below.
The optional p is a digit specifying the precision, the number of fractional digits after a decimal point. A value of 0 causes no decimal point or fraction to be output. At most three places after the decimal point may be specified; values of p greater than 3 are changed to 3. If p is not specified, the value 3 is used.
The optional l specifies a longer format, including minutes, of the form MMmSS.FFs. The value of p determines whether or not the fraction is included.
If this variable is not set, bash acts as if it had the value $’\nreal\t%3lR\nuser\t%3lU\nsys%3lS’. If the value is null, no timing information is displayed. A trailing newline is added when the format string is displayed.
TMOUT If set to a value greater than zero, TMOUT is treated as the default timeout for the read builtin. The select command terminates if input does not arrive after TMOUT seconds when input is coming from a terminal. In an interactive shell, the value is interpreted as the number of seconds to wait for input after issuing the primary prompt. Bash terminates after waiting for that number of seconds if input does not arrive.
TMPDIR If set, Bash uses its value as the name of a directory in which Bash creates temporary files for the shell’s use.
auto_resume
This variable controls how the shell interacts with the user and
job control. If this variable is set, single word simple commands
without redirections are treated as candidates for resumption
of an existing stopped job. There is no ambiguity allowed;
if there is more than one job beginning with the string typed,
the job most recently accessed is selected. The name of a
stopped job, in this context, is the command line used to start
it. If set to the value exact, the string supplied must match
the name of a stopped job exactly; if set to substring, the
string supplied needs to match a substring of the name of a
stopped job. The substring value provides functionality analogous
to the %? job identifier (see JOB CONTROL below). If set
to any other value, the supplied string must be a prefix of a
stopped job’s name; this provides functionality analogous to the
%string job identifier.
histchars
The two or three characters which control history expansion and
tokenization (see HISTORY EXPANSION below). The first character
is the history expansion character, the character which signals
the start of a history expansion, normally ‘!’. The second
character is the quick substitution character, which is used as
shorthand for re-running the previous command entered, substituting
one string for another in the command. The default is
‘^’. The optional third character is the character which indicates
that the remainder of the line is a comment when found as
the first character of a word, normally ‘#’. The history comment
character causes history substitution to be skipped for the
remaining words on the line. It does not necessarily cause the
shell parser to treat the rest of the line as a comment.
Arrays
Bash provides one-dimensional array variables. Any variable may be
used as an array; the declare builtin will explicitly declare an array.
There is no maximum limit on the size of an array, nor any requirement
that members be indexed or assigned contiguously. Arrays are indexed
using integers and are zero-based.
An array is created automatically if any variable is assigned to using the syntax name[subscript]=value. The subscript is treated as an arithmetic expression that must evaluate to a number greater than or equal to zero. To explicitly declare an array, use declare -a name (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). declare -a name[subscript] is also accepted; the subscript is ignored. Attributes may be specified for an array variable using the declare and readonly builtins. Each attribute applies to all members of an array.
Arrays are assigned to using compound assignments of the form name=(value1 ... valuen), where each value is of the form [sub_script]=string. Only string is required. If the optional brackets and subscript are supplied, that index is assigned to; otherwise the index of the element assigned is the last index assigned to by the statement plus one. Indexing starts at zero. This syntax is also accepted by the declare builtin. Individual array elements may be assigned to using the name[subscript]=value syntax introduced above.
Any element of an array may be referenced using ${name[subscript]}. The braces are required to avoid conflicts with pathname expansion. If subscript is @ or *, the word expands to all members of name. These subscripts differ only when the word appears within double quotes. If the word is double-quoted, ${name[*]} expands to a single word with the value of each array member separated by the first character of the IFS special variable, and ${name[@]} expands each element of name to a separate word. When there are no array members, ${name[@]} expands to nothing. If the double-quoted expansion occurs within a word, the expansion of the first parameter is joined with the beginning part of the original word, and the expansion of the last parameter is joined with the last part of the original word. This is analogous to the expansion of the special parameters * and @ (see Special Parameters above). ${#name[subscript]} expands to the length of ${name[sub_script]}. If subscript is * or @, the expansion is the number of elements in the array. Referencing an array variable without a subscript is equivalent to referencing element zero.
The unset builtin is used to destroy arrays. unset name[subscript] destroys the array element at index subscript. Care must be taken to avoid unwanted side effects caused by filename generation. unset name, where name is an array, or unset name[subscript], where subscript is * or @, removes the entire array.
The declare, local, and readonly builtins each accept a -a option to specify an array. The read builtin accepts a -a option to assign a list of words read from the standard input to an array. The set and declare builtins display array values in a way that allows them to be reused as assignments.
Expansion is performed on the command line after it has been split into words. There are seven kinds of expansion performed: brace expansion, tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, command substitu_tion, arithmetic expansion, word splitting, and pathname expansion.
The order of expansions is: brace expansion, tilde expansion, parameter, variable and arithmetic expansion and command substitution (done in a left-to-right fashion), word splitting, and pathname expansion.
On systems that can support it, there is an additional expansion available: process substitution.
Only brace expansion, word splitting, and pathname expansion can change the number of words of the expansion; other expansions expand a single word to a single word. The only exceptions to this are the expansions of “$@” and “${name[@]}” as explained above (see PARAMETERS).
Brace Expansion
Brace expansion is a mechanism by which arbitrary strings may be generated.
This mechanism is similar to pathname expansion, but the filenames
generated need not exist. Patterns to be brace expanded take the
form of an optional preamble, followed by either a series of comma-separated
strings or a sequence expression between a pair of braces, followed
by an optional postscript. The preamble is prefixed to each
string contained within the braces, and the postscript is then appended
to each resulting string, expanding left to right.
Brace expansions may be nested. The results of each expanded string are not sorted; left to right order is preserved. For example, a{d,c,b}e expands into ‘ade ace abe’.
A sequence expression takes the form {x..y}, where x and y are either integers or single characters. When integers are supplied, the expression expands to each number between x and y, inclusive. When characters are supplied, the expression expands to each character lexicographically between x and y, inclusive. Note that both x and y must be of the same type.
Brace expansion is performed before any other expansions, and any characters special to other expansions are preserved in the result. It is strictly textual. Bash does not apply any syntactic interpretation to the context of the expansion or the text between the braces.
A correctly-formed brace expansion must contain unquoted opening and closing braces, and at least one unquoted comma or a valid sequence expression. Any incorrectly formed brace expansion is left unchanged. A { or , may be quoted with a backslash to prevent its being considered part of a brace expression. To avoid conflicts with parameter expansion, the string ${ is not considered eligible for brace expansion.
This construct is typically used as shorthand when the common prefix of the strings to be generated is longer than in the above example:
mkdir /usr/local/src/bash/{old,new,dist,bugs}
or
chown root /usr/{ucb/{ex,edit},lib/{ex?.?*,how_ex}}
Brace expansion introduces a slight incompatibility with historical versions of sh. sh does not treat opening or closing braces specially when they appear as part of a word, and preserves them in the output. Bash removes braces from words as a consequence of brace expansion. For example, a word entered to sh as file{1,2} appears identically in the output. The same word is output as file1 file2 after expansion by bash. If strict compatibility with sh is desired, start bash with the +B option or disable brace expansion with the +B option to the set command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
Tilde Expansion
If a word begins with an unquoted tilde character (’~’), all of the
characters preceding the first unquoted slash (or all characters, if
there is no unquoted slash) are considered a tilde-prefix. If none of
the characters in the tilde-prefix are quoted, the characters in the
tilde-prefix following the tilde are treated as a possible login name.
If this login name is the null string, the tilde is replaced with the
value of the shell parameter HOME. If HOME is unset, the home directory
of the user executing the shell is substituted instead. Otherwise,
the tilde-prefix is replaced with the home directory associated
with the specified login name.
If the tilde-prefix is a ‘~+’, the value of the shell variable PWD replaces the tilde-prefix. If the tilde-prefix is a ‘~-’, the value of the shell variable OLDPWD, if it is set, is substituted. If the characters following the tilde in the tilde-prefix consist of a number N, optionally prefixed by a ‘+’ or a ‘-’, the tilde-prefix is replaced with the corresponding element from the directory stack, as it would be displayed by the dirs builtin invoked with the tilde-prefix as an argument. If the characters following the tilde in the tilde-prefix consist of a number without a leading ‘+’ or ‘-’, ‘+’ is assumed.
If the login name is invalid, or the tilde expansion fails, the word is unchanged.
Each variable assignment is checked for unquoted tilde-prefixes immediately following a : or the first =. In these cases, tilde expansion is also performed. Consequently, one may use file names with tildes in assignments to PATH, MAILPATH, and CDPATH, and the shell assigns the expanded value.
Parameter Expansion
The ‘$’ character introduces parameter expansion, command substitution,
or arithmetic expansion. The parameter name or symbol to be expanded
may be enclosed in braces, which are optional but serve to protect the
variable to be expanded from characters immediately following it which
could be interpreted as part of the name.
When braces are used, the matching ending brace is the first ‘}’ not escaped by a backslash or within a quoted string, and not within an embedded arithmetic expansion, command substitution, or parameter expansion.
${parameter}
The value of parameter is substituted. The braces are required
when parameter is a positional parameter with more than one
digit, or when parameter is followed by a character which is not
to be interpreted as part of its name.
If the first character of parameter is an exclamation point, a level of variable indirection is introduced. Bash uses the value of the variable formed from the rest of parameter as the name of the variable; this variable is then expanded and that value is used in the rest of the substitution, rather than the value of parameter itself. This is known as indirect expansion. The exceptions to this are the expansions of ${!prefix*} and ${!name[@]} described below. The exclamation point must immediately follow the left brace in order to introduce indirection.
In each of the cases below, word is subject to tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion. When not performing substring expansion, bash tests for a parameter that is unset or null; omitting the colon results in a test only for a parameter that is unset.
${parameter:-word}
Use Default Values. If parameter is unset or null, the expansion
of word is substituted. Otherwise, the value of parameter
is substituted.
${parameter:=word}
Assign Default Values. If parameter is unset or null, the
expansion of word is assigned to parameter. The value of param_eter
is then substituted. Positional parameters and special
parameters may not be assigned to in this way.
${parameter:?word}
Display Error if Null or Unset. If parameter is null or unset,
the expansion of word (or a message to that effect if word is
not present) is written to the standard error and the shell, if
it is not interactive, exits. Otherwise, the value of parameter
is substituted.
${parameter:+word}
Use Alternate Value. If parameter is null or unset, nothing is
substituted, otherwise the expansion of word is substituted.
${parameter:offset}
${parameter:offset:length}
Substring Expansion. Expands to up to length characters of
parameter starting at the character specified by offset. If
length is omitted, expands to the substring of parameter starting
at the character specified by offset. length and offset are
arithmetic expressions (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION below).
length must evaluate to a number greater than or equal to zero.
If offset evaluates to a number less than zero, the value is
used as an offset from the end of the value of parameter. If
parameter is @, the result is length positional parameters
beginning at offset. If parameter is an array name indexed by @
or *, the result is the length members of the array beginning
with ${parameter[offset]}. A negative offset is taken relative
to one greater than the maximum index of the specified array.
Note that a negative offset must be separated from the colon by
at least one space to avoid being confused with the :- expansion.
Substring indexing is zero-based unless the positional
parameters are used, in which case the indexing starts at 1.
${!prefix*}
${!prefix@}
Expands to the names of variables whose names begin with prefix,
separated by the first character of the IFS special variable.
${!name[@]}
${!name[*]}
If name is an array variable, expands to the list of array
indices (keys) assigned in name. If name is not an array,
expands to 0 if name is set and null otherwise. When @ is used
and the expansion appears within double quotes, each key expands
to a separate word.
${#parameter}
The length in characters of the value of parameter is substituted.
If parameter is * or @, the value substituted is the
number of positional parameters. If parameter is an array name
subscripted by * or @, the value substituted is the number of
elements in the array.
${parameter#word}
${parameter##word}
The word is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname
expansion. If the pattern matches the beginning of the value of
parameter, then the result of the expansion is the expanded
value of parameter with the shortest matching pattern (the ‘’#’’
case) or the longest matching pattern (the ‘’##’’ case) deleted.
If parameter is @ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied
to each positional parameter in turn, and the expansion is the
resultant list. If parameter is an array variable subscripted
with @ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each
member of the array in turn, and the expansion is the resultant
list.
${parameter%word}
${parameter%%word}
The word is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname
expansion. If the pattern matches a trailing portion of the
expanded value of parameter, then the result of the expansion is
the expanded value of parameter with the shortest matching pattern
(the ‘’%’’ case) or the longest matching pattern (the
‘’%%’’ case) deleted. If parameter is @ or *, the pattern
removal operation is applied to each positional parameter in
turn, and the expansion is the resultant list. If parameter is
an array variable subscripted with @ or *, the pattern removal
operation is applied to each member of the array in turn, and
the expansion is the resultant list.
${parameter/pattern/string}
${parameter//pattern/string}
The pattern is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname
expansion. Parameter is expanded and the longest match of pat_tern
against its value is replaced with string. In the first
form, only the first match is replaced. The second form causes
all matches of pattern to be replaced with string. If pattern
begins with #, it must match at the beginning of the expanded
value of parameter. If pattern begins with %, it must match at
the end of the expanded value of parameter. If string is null,
matches of pattern are deleted and the / following pattern may
be omitted. If parameter is @ or *, the substitution operation
is applied to each positional parameter in turn, and the expansion
is the resultant list. If parameter is an array variable
subscripted with @ or *, the substitution operation is applied
to each member of the array in turn, and the expansion is the
resultant list.
Command Substitution
Command substitution allows the output of a command to replace the command
name. There are two forms:
$(command)
or
‘command’
Bash performs the expansion by executing command and replacing the command substitution with the standard output of the command, with any trailing newlines deleted. Embedded newlines are not deleted, but they may be removed during word splitting. The command substitution $(cat file) can be replaced by the equivalent but faster $(< file).
When the old-style backquote form of substitution is used, backslash retains its literal meaning except when followed by $, ‘, or \. The first backquote not preceded by a backslash terminates the command substitution. When using the $(command) form, all characters between the parentheses make up the command; none are treated specially.
Command substitutions may be nested. To nest when using the backquoted form, escape the inner backquotes with backslashes.
If the substitution appears within double quotes, word splitting and pathname expansion are not performed on the results.
Arithmetic Expansion
Arithmetic expansion allows the evaluation of an arithmetic expression
and the substitution of the result. The format for arithmetic expansion
is:
$((expression))
The expression is treated as if it were within double quotes, but a double quote inside the parentheses is not treated specially. All tokens in the expression undergo parameter expansion, string expansion, command substitution, and quote removal. Arithmetic expansions may be nested.
The evaluation is performed according to the rules listed below under ARITHMETIC EVALUATION. If expression is invalid, bash prints a message indicating failure and no substitution occurs.
Process Substitution
Process substitution is supported on systems that support named pipes
(FIFOs) or the /dev/fd method of naming open files. It takes the form
of <(list) or >(list). The process list is run with its input or output
connected to a FIFO or some file in /dev/fd. The name of this file
is passed as an argument to the current command as the result of the
expansion. If the >(list) form is used, writing to the file will provide
input for list. If the <(list) form is used, the file passed as
an argument should be read to obtain the output of list.
When available, process substitution is performed simultaneously with parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion.
Word Splitting
The shell scans the results of parameter expansion, command substitution,
and arithmetic expansion that did not occur within double quotes
for word splitting.
The shell treats each character of IFS as a delimiter, and splits the results of the other expansions into words on these characters. If IFS is unset, or its value is exactly <space><tab><newline>, the default, then any sequence of IFS characters serves to delimit words. If IFS has a value other than the default, then sequences of the whitespace characters space and tab are ignored at the beginning and end of the word, as long as the whitespace character is in the value of IFS (an IFS whitespace character). Any character in IFS that is not IFS whitespace, along with any adjacent IFS whitespace characters, delimits a field. A sequence of IFS whitespace characters is also treated as a delimiter. If the value of IFS is null, no word splitting occurs.
Explicit null arguments ("” or ‘’) are retained. Unquoted implicit null arguments, resulting from the expansion of parameters that have no values, are removed. If a parameter with no value is expanded within double quotes, a null argument results and is retained.
Note that if no expansion occurs, no splitting is performed.
Pathname Expansion
After word splitting, unless the -f option has been set, bash scans
each word for the characters *, ?, and [. If one of these characters
appears, then the word is regarded as a pattern, and replaced with an
alphabetically sorted list of file names matching the pattern. If no
matching file names are found, and the shell option nullglob is disabled,
the word is left unchanged. If the nullglob option is set, and
no matches are found, the word is removed. If the failglob shell
option is set, and no matches are found, an error message is printed
and the command is not executed. If the shell option nocaseglob is
enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of alphabetic
characters. When a pattern is used for pathname expansion, the
character ‘’.’’ at the start of a name or immediately following a
slash must be matched explicitly, unless the shell option dotglob is
set. When matching a pathname, the slash character must always be
matched explicitly. In other cases, the ‘’.’’ character is not
treated specially. See the description of shopt below under SHELL
BUILTIN COMMANDS for a description of the nocaseglob, nullglob, failglob,
and dotglob shell options.
The GLOBIGNORE shell variable may be used to restrict the set of file names matching a pattern. If GLOBIGNORE is set, each matching file name that also matches one of the patterns in GLOBIGNORE is removed from the list of matches. The file names ‘’.’’ and ‘’..’’ are always ignored when GLOBIGNORE is set and not null. However, setting GLOBIGNORE to a non-null value has the effect of enabling the dotglob shell option, so all other file names beginning with a ‘’.’’ will match. To get the old behavior of ignoring file names beginning with a ‘’.’’, make ‘’.*’’ one of the patterns in GLOBIGNORE. The dotglob option is disabled when GLOBIGNORE is unset.
Pattern Matching
Any character that appears in a pattern, other than the special pattern characters described below, matches itself. The NUL character may not occur in a pattern. A backslash escapes the following character; the escaping backslash is discarded when matching. The special pattern characters must be quoted if they are to be matched literally.
The special pattern characters have the following meanings:
Within [ and ], character classes can be specified using the
syntax [:class:], where class is one of the following classes
defined in the POSIX.2 standard:
alnum alpha ascii blank cntrl digit graph lower print punct
space upper word xdigit
A character class matches any character belonging to that class.
The word character class matches letters, digits, and the character
_.
Within [ and ], an equivalence class can be specified using the syntax [=c=], which matches all characters with the same collation weight (as defined by the current locale) as the character c.
Within [ and ], the syntax [.symbol.] matches the collating symbol symbol.
If the extglob shell option is enabled using the shopt builtin, several extended pattern matching operators are recognized. In the following description, a pattern-list is a list of one or more patterns separated by a |. Composite patterns may be formed using one or more of the following sub-patterns:
?(pattern-list)
Matches zero or one occurrence of the given patterns
*(pattern-list)
Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns
+(pattern-list)
Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns
@(pattern-list)
Matches one of the given patterns
!(pattern-list)
Matches anything except one of the given patterns
Quote Removal
After the preceding expansions, all unquoted occurrences of the characters
\, ‘, and “ that did not result from one of the above expansions
are removed.
Before a command is executed, its input and output may be redirected using a special notation interpreted by the shell. Redirection may also be used to open and close files for the current shell execution environment. The following redirection operators may precede or appear anywhere within a simple command or may follow a command. Redirections are processed in the order they appear, from left to right.
In the following descriptions, if the file descriptor number is omitted, and the first character of the redirection operator is <, the redirection refers to the standard input (file descriptor 0). If the first character of the redirection operator is >, the redirection refers to the standard output (file descriptor 1).
The word following the redirection operator in the following descriptions, unless otherwise noted, is subjected to brace expansion, tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, quote removal, pathname expansion, and word splitting. If it expands to more than one word, bash reports an error.
Note that the order of redirections is significant. For example, the command
ls > dirlist 2>&1
directs both standard output and standard error to the file dirlist, while the command
ls 2>&1 > dirlist
directs only the standard output to file dirlist, because the standard error was duplicated as standard output before the standard output was redirected to dirlist.
Bash handles several filenames specially when they are used in redirections, as described in the following table:
/dev/fd/fd
If fd is a valid integer, file descriptor fd is duplicated.
/dev/stdin
File descriptor 0 is duplicated.
/dev/stdout
File descriptor 1 is duplicated.
/dev/stderr
File descriptor 2 is duplicated.
/dev/tcp/host/port
If host is a valid hostname or Internet address, and port
is an integer port number or service name, bash attempts
to open a TCP connection to the corresponding socket.
/dev/udp/host/port
If host is a valid hostname or Internet address, and port
is an integer port number or service name, bash attempts
to open a UDP connection to the corresponding socket.
A failure to open or create a file causes the redirection to fail.
Redirections using file descriptors greater than 9 should be used with care, as they may conflict with file descriptors the shell uses internally.
Redirecting Input
Redirection of input causes the file whose name results from the expansion
of word to be opened for reading on file descriptor n, or the
standard input (file descriptor 0) if n is not specified.
The general format for redirecting input is:
[n]<word
Redirecting Output
Redirection of output causes the file whose name results from the
expansion of word to be opened for writing on file descriptor n, or the
standard output (file descriptor 1) if n is not specified. If the file
does not exist it is created; if it does exist it is truncated to zero
size.
The general format for redirecting output is:
[n]>word
If the redirection operator is >, and the noclobber option to the set builtin has been enabled, the redirection will fail if the file whose name results from the expansion of word exists and is a regular file. If the redirection operator is >|, or the redirection operator is > and the noclobber option to the set builtin command is not enabled, the redirection is attempted even if the file named by word exists.
Appending Redirected Output
Redirection of output in this fashion causes the file whose name
results from the expansion of word to be opened for appending on file
descriptor n, or the standard output (file descriptor 1) if n is not
specified. If the file does not exist it is created.
The general format for appending output is:
[n]>>word
Redirecting Standard Output and Standard Error Bash allows both the standard output (file descriptor 1) and the standard error output (file descriptor 2) to be redirected to the file whose name is the expansion of word with this construct.
There are two formats for redirecting standard output and standard error:
&>word
and
>&word
Of the two forms, the first is preferred. This is semantically equivalent to
>word 2>&1
Here Documents
This type of redirection instructs the shell to read input from the
current source until a line containing only word (with no trailing
blanks) is seen. All of the lines read up to that point are then used
as the standard input for a command.
The format of here-documents is:
<<[-]word
here-document
delimiter
No parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, or pathname expansion is performed on word. If any characters in word are quoted, the delimiter is the result of quote removal on word, and the lines in the here-document are not expanded. If word is unquoted, all lines of the here-document are subjected to parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion. In the latter case, the character sequence \<newline> is ignored, and \ must be used to quote the characters \, $, and ‘.
If the redirection operator is <<-, then all leading tab characters are stripped from input lines and the line containing delimiter. This allows here-documents within shell scripts to be indented in a natural fashion.
Here Strings
A variant of here documents, the format is:
<<<word
The word is expanded and supplied to the command on its standard input.
Duplicating File Descriptors
The redirection operator
[n]<&word
is used to duplicate input file descriptors. If word expands to one or more digits, the file descriptor denoted by n is made to be a copy of that file descriptor. If the digits in word do not specify a file descriptor open for input, a redirection error occurs. If word evaluates to -, file descriptor n is closed. If n is not specified, the standard input (file descriptor 0) is used.
The operator
[n]>&word
is used similarly to duplicate output file descriptors. If n is not specified, the standard output (file descriptor 1) is used. If the digits in word do not specify a file descriptor open for output, a redirection error occurs. As a special case, if n is omitted, and word does not expand to one or more digits, the standard output and standard error are redirected as described previously.
Moving File Descriptors
The redirection operator
[n]<&digit
moves the file descriptor digit to file descriptor n, or the standard
input (file descriptor 0) if n is not specified. digit is closed after
being duplicated to n.
Similarly, the redirection operator
[n]>&digit
moves the file descriptor digit to file descriptor n, or the standard
output (file descriptor 1) if n is not specified.
Opening File Descriptors for Reading and Writing The redirection operator
[n]<>word
causes the file whose name is the expansion of word to be opened for both reading and writing on file descriptor n, or on file descriptor 0 if n is not specified. If the file does not exist, it is created.
Aliases allow a string to be substituted for a word when it is used as the first word of a simple command. The shell maintains a list of aliases that may be set and unset with the alias and unalias builtin commands (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). The first word of each simple command, if unquoted, is checked to see if it has an alias. If so, that word is replaced by the text of the alias. The characters /, $, ‘, and = and any of the shell metacharacters or quoting characters listed above may not appear in an alias name. The replacement text may contain any valid shell input, including shell metacharacters. The first word of the replacement text is tested for aliases, but a word that is identical to an alias being expanded is not expanded a second time. This means that one may alias ls to ls -F, for instance, and bash does not try to recursively expand the replacement text. If the last character of the alias value is a blank, then the next command word following the alias is also checked for alias expansion.
Aliases are created and listed with the alias command, and removed with the unalias command.
There is no mechanism for using arguments in the replacement text. If arguments are needed, a shell function should be used (see FUNCTIONS below).
Aliases are not expanded when the shell is not interactive, unless the expand_aliases shell option is set using shopt (see the description of shopt under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
The rules concerning the definition and use of aliases are somewhat confusing. Bash always reads at least one complete line of input before executing any of the commands on that line. Aliases are expanded when a command is read, not when it is executed. Therefore, an alias definition appearing on the same line as another command does not take effect until the next line of input is read. The commands following the alias definition on that line are not affected by the new alias. This behavior is also an issue when functions are executed. Aliases are expanded when a function definition is read, not when the function is executed, because a function definition is itself a compound command. As a consequence, aliases defined in a function are not available until after that function is executed. To be safe, always put alias definitions on a separate line, and do not use alias in compound commands.
For almost every purpose, aliases are superseded by shell functions.
A shell function, defined as described above under SHELL GRAMMAR, stores a series of commands for later execution. When the name of a shell function is used as a simple command name, the list of commands associated with that function name is executed. Functions are executed in the context of the current shell; no new process is created to interpret them (contrast this with the execution of a shell script). When a function is executed, the arguments to the function become the positional parameters during its execution. The special parameter # is updated to reflect the change. Special parameter 0 is unchanged. The first element of the FUNCNAME variable is set to the name of the function while the function is executing. All other aspects of the shell execution environment are identical between a function and its caller with the exception that the DEBUG and RETURN traps (see the description of the trap builtin under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) are not inherited unless the function has been given the trace attribute (see the description of the declare builtin below) or the -o functrace shell option has been enabled with the set builtin (in which case all functions inherit the DEBUG and RETURN traps).
Variables local to the function may be declared with the local builtin command. Ordinarily, variables and their values are shared between the function and its caller.
If the builtin command return is executed in a function, the function completes and execution resumes with the next command after the function call. Any command associated with the RETURN trap is executed before execution resumes. When a function completes, the values of the positional parameters and the special parameter # are restored to the values they had prior to the function’s execution.
Function names and definitions may be listed with the -f option to the declare or typeset builtin commands. The -F option to declare or typeset will list the function names only (and optionally the source file and line number, if the extdebug shell option is enabled). Functions may be exported so that subshells automatically have them defined with the -f option to the export builtin. Note that shell functions and variables with the same name may result in multiple identically-named entries in the environment passed to the shell’s children. Care should be taken in cases where this may cause a problem.
Functions may be recursive. No limit is imposed on the number of recursive calls.
The shell allows arithmetic expressions to be evaluated, under certain circumstances (see the let and declare builtin commands and Arithmetic Expansion). Evaluation is done in fixed-width integers with no check for overflow, though division by 0 is trapped and flagged as an error. The operators and their precedence, associativity, and values are the same as in the C language. The following list of operators is grouped into levels of equal-precedence operators. The levels are listed in order of decreasing precedence.
id++ id-variable
post-increment and post-decrement
++id --id
variable pre-increment and pre-decrement
Shell variables are allowed as operands; parameter expansion is performed before the expression is evaluated. Within an expression, shell variables may also be referenced by name without using the parameter expansion syntax. A shell variable that is null or unset evaluates to 0 when referenced by name without using the parameter expansion syntax. The value of a variable is evaluated as an arithmetic expression when it is referenced, or when a variable which has been given the integer attribute using declare -i is assigned a value. A null value evaluates to 0. A shell variable need not have its integer attribute turned on to be used in an expression.
Constants with a leading 0 are interpreted as octal numbers. A leading 0x or 0X denotes hexadecimal. Otherwise, numbers take the form [base#]n, where base is a decimal number between 2 and 64 representing the arithmetic base, and n is a number in that base. If base# is omitted, then base 10 is used. The digits greater than 9 are represented by the lowercase letters, the uppercase letters, @, and _, in that order. If base is less than or equal to 36, lowercase and uppercase letters may be used interchangeably to represent numbers between 10 and 35.
Operators are evaluated in order of precedence. Sub-expressions in parentheses are evaluated first and may override the precedence rules above.
Conditional expressions are used by the [[ compound command and the test and [ builtin commands to test file attributes and perform string and arithmetic comparisons. Expressions are formed from the following unary or binary primaries. If any file argument to one of the primaries is of the form /dev/fd/n, then file descriptor n is checked. If the file argument to one of the primaries is one of /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout, or /dev/stderr, file descriptor 0, 1, or 2, respectively, is checked.
Unless otherwise specified, primaries that operate on files follow symbolic links and operate on the target of the link, rather than the link itself.
string1 == string2
True if the strings are equal. = may be used in place of == for
strict POSIX compliance.
string1 != string2
True if the strings are not equal.
string1 < string2
True if string1 sorts before string2 lexicographically in the
current locale.
string1 > string2
True if string1 sorts after string2 lexicographically in the
current locale.
arg1 OP arg2
OP is one of -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt, or -ge. These arithmetic
binary operators return true if arg1 is equal to, not equal to,
less than, less than or equal to, greater than, or greater than
or equal to arg2, respectively. Arg1 and arg2 may be positive
or negative integers.
When a simple command is executed, the shell performs the following expansions, assignments, and redirections, from left to right.
1. The words that the parser has marked as variable assignments (those preceding the command name) and redirections are saved for later processing.
2. The words that are not variable assignments or redirections are expanded. If any words remain after expansion, the first word is taken to be the name of the command and the remaining words are the arguments.
3. Redirections are performed as described above under REDIRECTION.
4. The text after the = in each variable assignment undergoes tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal before being assigned to the variable.
If no command name results, the variable assignments affect the current shell environment. Otherwise, the variables are added to the environment of the executed command and do not affect the current shell environment. If any of the assignments attempts to assign a value to a readonly variable, an error occurs, and the command exits with a nonzero status.
If no command name results, redirections are performed, but do not affect the current shell environment. A redirection error causes the command to exit with a non-zero status.
If there is a command name left after expansion, execution proceeds as described below. Otherwise, the command exits. If one of the expansions contained a command substitution, the exit status of the command is the exit status of the last command substitution performed. If there were no command substitutions, the command exits with a status of zero.
After a command has been split into words, if it results in a simple command and an optional list of arguments, the following actions are taken.
If the command name contains no slashes, the shell attempts to locate it. If there exists a shell function by that name, that function is invoked as described above in FUNCTIONS. If the name does not match a function, the shell searches for it in the list of shell builtins. If a match is found, that builtin is invoked.
If the name is neither a shell function nor a builtin, and contains no slashes, bash searches each element of the PATH for a directory containing an executable file by that name. Bash uses a hash table to remember the full pathnames of executable files (see hash under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). A full search of the directories in PATH is performed only if the command is not found in the hash table. If the search is unsuccessful, the shell prints an error message and returns an exit status of 127.
If the search is successful, or if the command name contains one or more slashes, the shell executes the named program in a separate execution environment. Argument 0 is set to the name given, and the remaining arguments to the command are set to the arguments given, if any.
If this execution fails because the file is not in executable format, and the file is not a directory, it is assumed to be a shell script, a file containing shell commands. A subshell is spawned to execute it. This subshell reinitializes itself, so that the effect is as if a new shell had been invoked to handle the script, with the exception that the locations of commands remembered by the parent (see hash below under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS) are retained by the child.
If the program is a file beginning with #!, the remainder of the first line specifies an interpreter for the program. The shell executes the specified interpreter on operating systems that do not handle this executable format themselves. The arguments to the interpreter consist of a single optional argument following the interpreter name on the first line of the program, followed by the name of the program, followed by the command arguments, if any.
The shell has an execution environment, which consists of the following:
When a simple command other than a builtin or shell function is to be executed, it is invoked in a separate execution environment that consists of the following. Unless otherwise noted, the values are inherited from the shell.
A command invoked in this separate environment cannot affect the shell’s execution environment.
Command substitution, commands grouped with parentheses, and asynchronous commands are invoked in a subshell environment that is a duplicate of the shell environment, except that traps caught by the shell are reset to the values that the shell inherited from its parent at invocation. Builtin commands that are invoked as part of a pipeline are also executed in a subshell environment. Changes made to the subshell environment cannot affect the shell’s execution environment.
If a command is followed by a & and job control is not active, the default standard input for the command is the empty file /dev/null. Otherwise, the invoked command inherits the file descriptors of the calling shell as modified by redirections.
When a program is invoked it is given an array of strings called the environment. This is a list of name-value pairs, of the form name=value.
The shell provides several ways to manipulate the environment. On invocation, the shell scans its own environment and creates a parameter for each name found, automatically marking it for export to child processes. Executed commands inherit the environment. The export and declare -x commands allow parameters and functions to be added to and deleted from the environment. If the value of a parameter in the environment is modified, the new value becomes part of the environment, replacing the old. The environment inherited by any executed command consists of the shell’s initial environment, whose values may be modified in the shell, less any pairs removed by the unset command, plus any additions via the export and declare -x commands.
The environment for any simple command or function may be augmented temporarily by prefixing it with parameter assignments, as described above in PARAMETERS. These assignment statements affect only the environment seen by that command.
If the -k option is set (see the set builtin command below), then all parameter assignments are placed in the environment for a command, not just those that precede the command name.
When bash invokes an external command, the variable _ is set to the full file name of the command and passed to that command in its environment.
For the shell’s purposes, a command which exits with a zero exit status has succeeded. An exit status of zero indicates success. A non-zero exit status indicates failure. When a command terminates on a fatal signal N, bash uses the value of 128+N as the exit status.
If a command is not found, the child process created to execute it returns a status of 127. If a command is found but is not executable, the return status is 126.
If a command fails because of an error during expansion or redirection, the exit status is greater than zero.
Shell builtin commands return a status of 0 (true) if successful, and non-zero (false) if an error occurs while they execute. All builtins return an exit status of 2 to indicate incorrect usage.
Bash itself returns the exit status of the last command executed, unless a syntax error occurs, in which case it exits with a non-zero value. See also the exit builtin command below.
When bash is interactive, in the absence of any traps, it ignores SIGTERM (so that kill 0 does not kill an interactive shell), and SIGINT is caught and handled (so that the wait builtin is interruptible). In all cases, bash ignores SIGQUIT. If job control is in effect, bash ignores SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, and SIGTSTP.
Non-builtin commands run by bash have signal handlers set to the values inherited by the shell from its parent. When job control is not in effect, asynchronous commands ignore SIGINT and SIGQUIT in addition to these inherited handlers. Commands run as a result of command substitution ignore the keyboard-generated job control signals SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, and SIGTSTP.
The shell exits by default upon receipt of a SIGHUP. Before exiting, an interactive shell resends the SIGHUP to all jobs, running or stopped. Stopped jobs are sent SIGCONT to ensure that they receive the SIGHUP. To prevent the shell from sending the signal to a particular job, it should be removed from the jobs table with the disown builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) or marked to not receive SIGHUP using disown -h.
If the huponexit shell option has been set with shopt, bash sends a SIGHUP to all jobs when an interactive login shell exits.
If bash is waiting for a command to complete and receives a signal for which a trap has been set, the trap will not be executed until the command completes. When bash is waiting for an asynchronous command via the wait builtin, the reception of a signal for which a trap has been set will cause the wait builtin to return immediately with an exit status greater than 128, immediately after which the trap is executed.
Job control refers to the ability to selectively stop (suspend) the execution of processes and continue (resume) their execution at a later point. A user typically employs this facility via an interactive interface supplied jointly by the system’s terminal driver and bash.
The shell associates a job with each pipeline. It keeps a table of currently executing jobs, which may be listed with the jobs command. When bash starts a job asynchronously (in the background), it prints a line that looks like:
indicating that this job is job number 1 and that the process ID of the last process in the pipeline associated with this job is 25647. All of the processes in a single pipeline are members of the same job. Bash uses the job abstraction as the basis for job control.
To facilitate the implementation of the user interface to job control, the operating system maintains the notion of a current terminal process group ID. Members of this process group (processes whose process group ID is equal to the current terminal process group ID) receive keyboardgenerated signals such as SIGINT. These processes are said to be in the foreground. Background processes are those whose process group ID differs from the terminal’s; such processes are immune to keyboard-generated signals. Only foreground processes are allowed to read from or write to the terminal. Background processes which attempt to read from (write to) the terminal are sent a SIGTTIN (SIGTTOU) signal by the terminal driver, which, unless caught, suspends the process.
If the operating system on which bash is running supports job control, bash contains facilities to use it. Typing the suspend character (typically ^Z, Control-Z) while a process is running causes that process to be stopped and returns control to bash. Typing the delayed suspend character (typically ^Y, Control-Y) causes the process to be stopped when it attempts to read input from the terminal, and control to be returned to bash. The user may then manipulate the state of this job, using the bg command to continue it in the background, the fg command to continue it in the foreground, or the kill command to kill it. A ^Z takes effect immediately, and has the additional side effect of causing pending output and typeahead to be discarded.
There are a number of ways to refer to a job in the shell. The character % introduces a job name. Job number n may be referred to as %n. A job may also be referred to using a prefix of the name used to start it, or using a substring that appears in its command line. For example, %ce refers to a stopped ce job. If a prefix matches more than one job, bash reports an error. Using %?ce, on the other hand, refers to any job containing the string ce in its command line. If the substring matches more than one job, bash reports an error. The symbols %% and %+ refer to the shell’s notion of the current job, which is the last job stopped while it was in the foreground or started in the background. The previous job may be referenced using %-. In output pertaining to jobs (e.g., the output of the jobs command), the current job is always flagged with a +, and the previous job with a -. A single % (with no accompanying job specification) also refers to the current job.
Simply naming a job can be used to bring it into the foreground: %1 is a synonym for ‘’fg %1’’, bringing job 1 from the background into the foreground. Similarly, ‘’%1 &’’ resumes job 1 in the background, equivalent to ‘’bg %1’’.
The shell learns immediately whenever a job changes state. Normally, bash waits until it is about to print a prompt before reporting changes in a job’s status so as to not interrupt any other output. If the -b option to the set builtin command is enabled, bash reports such changes immediately. Any trap on SIGCHLD is executed for each child that exits.
If an attempt to exit bash is made while jobs are stopped, the shell prints a warning message. The jobs command may then be used to inspect their status. If a second attempt to exit is made without an intervening command, the shell does not print another warning, and the stopped jobs are terminated.
When executing interactively, bash displays the primary prompt PS1 when it is ready to read a command, and the secondary prompt PS2 when it needs more input to complete a command. Bash allows these prompt strings to be customized by inserting a number of backslash-escaped special characters that are decoded as follows:
The command number and the history number are usually different: the history number of a command is its position in the history list, which may include commands restored from the history file (see HISTORY below), while the command number is the position in the sequence of commands executed during the current shell session. After the string is decoded, it is expanded via parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal, subject to the value of the promptvars shell option (see the description of the shopt command under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
This is the library that handles reading input when using an interactive shell, unless the --noediting option is given at shell invocation. By default, the line editing commands are similar to those of emacs. A vi-style line editing interface is also available. To turn off line editing after the shell is running, use the +o emacs or +o vi options to the set builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
Readline Notation
In this section, the emacs-style notation is used to denote keystrokes.
Control keys are denoted by C-key, e.g., C-n means Control-N. Similarly,
meta keys are denoted by M-key, so M-x means Meta-X. (On keyboards
without a meta key, M-x means ESC x, i.e., press the Escape key
then the x key. This makes ESC the meta prefix. The combination M-C-x
means ESC-Control-x, or press the Escape key then hold the Control key
while pressing the x key.)
Readline commands may be given numeric arguments, which normally act as a repeat count. Sometimes, however, it is the sign of the argument that is significant. Passing a negative argument to a command that acts in the forward direction (e.g., kill-line) causes that command to act in a backward direction. Commands whose behavior with arguments deviates from this are noted below.
When a command is described as killing text, the text deleted is saved for possible future retrieval (yanking). The killed text is saved in a kill ring. Consecutive kills cause the text to be accumulated into one unit, which can be yanked all at once. Commands which do not kill text separate the chunks of text on the kill ring.
Readline Initialization
Readline is customized by putting commands in an initialization file
(the inputrc file). The name of this file is taken from the value of
the INPUTRC variable. If that variable is unset, the default is
~/.inputrc. When a program which uses the readline library starts up,
the initialization file is read, and the key bindings and variables are
set. There are only a few basic constructs allowed in the readline
initialization file. Blank lines are ignored. Lines beginning with a
# are comments. Lines beginning with a $ indicate conditional constructs.
Other lines denote key bindings and variable settings.
The default key-bindings may be changed with an inputrc file. Other programs that use this library may add their own commands and bindings.
For example, placing
M-Control-u: universal-argument
or
C-Meta-u: universal-argument
into the inputrc would make M-C-u execute the readline command univer_sal-argument.
The following symbolic character names are recognized: RUBOUT, DEL, ESC, LFD, NEWLINE, RET, RETURN, SPC, SPACE, and TAB.
In addition to command names, readline allows keys to be bound to a string that is inserted when the key is pressed (a macro).
Readline Key Bindings
The syntax for controlling key bindings in the inputrc file is simple.
All that is required is the name of the command or the text of a macro
and a key sequence to which it should be bound. The name may be specified
in one of two ways: as a symbolic key name, possibly with Meta- or
Control- prefixes, or as a key sequence.
When using the form keyname:function-name or macro, keyname is the name of a key spelled out in English. For example:
Control-u: universal-argument
Meta-Rubout: backward-kill-word
Control-o: “> output"
In the above example, C-u is bound to the function universal-argument, M-DEL is bound to the function backward-kill-word, and C-o is bound to run the macro expressed on the right hand side (that is, to insert the text ‘’> output’’ into the line).
In the second form, “keyseq":function-name or macro, keyseq differs from keyname above in that strings denoting an entire key sequence may be specified by placing the sequence within double quotes. Some GNU Emacs style key escapes can be used, as in the following example, but the symbolic character names are not recognized.
“\C-u": universal-argument
“\C-x\C-r": re-read-init-file
“\e[11~": “Function Key 1"
In this example, C-u is again bound to the function universal-argument. C-x C-r is bound to the function re-read-init-file, and ESC [ 1 1 ~ is bound to insert the text ‘’Function Key 1’’.
The full set of GNU Emacs style escape sequences is
In addition to the GNU Emacs style escape sequences, a second set of
backslash escapes is available:
When entering the text of a macro, single or double quotes must be used to indicate a macro definition. Unquoted text is assumed to be a function name. In the macro body, the backslash escapes described above are expanded. Backslash will quote any other character in the macro text, including “ and ‘.
Bash allows the current readline key bindings to be displayed or modified with the bind builtin command. The editing mode may be switched during interactive use by using the -o option to the set builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
Readline Variables
Readline has variables that can be used to further customize its behavior.
A variable may be set in the inputrc file with a statement of the
form
set variable-name value
Except where noted, readline variables can take the values On or Off (without regard to case). Unrecognized variable names are ignored. When a variable value is read, empty or null values, “on” (caseinsensitive), and “1” are equivalent to On. All other values are equivalent to Off. The variables and their default values are:
bell-style (audible)
Controls what happens when readline wants to ring the terminal
bell. If set to none, readline never rings the bell. If set to
visible, readline uses a visible bell if one is available. If
set to audible, readline attempts to ring the terminal’s bell.
bind-tty-special-chars (On)
If set to On, readline attempts to bind the control characters
treated specially by the kernel’s terminal driver to their readline
equivalents.
comment-begin (’’#’’)
The string that is inserted when the readline insert-comment
command is executed. This command is bound to M-# in emacs mode
and to # in vi command mode.
completion-ignore-case (Off)
If set to On, readline performs filename matching and completion
in a case-insensitive fashion.
completion-query-items (100)
This determines when the user is queried about viewing the number
of possible completions generated by the possible-completions
command. It may be set to any integer value greater than
or equal to zero. If the number of possible completions is
greater than or equal to the value of this variable, the user is
asked whether or not he wishes to view them; otherwise they are
simply listed on the terminal.
convert-meta (On)
If set to On, readline will convert characters with the eighth
bit set to an ASCII key sequence by stripping the eighth bit and
prefixing an escape character (in effect, using escape as the
meta prefix).
disable-completion (Off)
If set to On, readline will inhibit word completion. Completion
characters will be inserted into the line as if they had been
mapped to self-insert.
editing-mode (emacs)
Controls whether readline begins with a set of key bindings similar
to emacs or vi. editing-mode can be set to either emacs or
vi.
enable-keypad (Off)
When set to On, readline will try to enable the application keypad
when it is called. Some systems need this to enable the
arrow keys.
expand-tilde (Off)
If set to on, tilde expansion is performed when readline
attempts word completion.
history-preserve-point (Off)
If set to on, the history code attempts to place point at the
same location on each history line retrieved with previous-history
or next-history.
horizontal-scroll-mode (Off)
When set to On, makes readline use a single line for display,
scrolling the input horizontally on a single screen line when it
becomes longer than the screen width rather than wrapping to a
new line.
input-meta (Off)
If set to On, readline will enable eight-bit input (that is, it
will not strip the high bit from the characters it reads),
regardless of what the terminal claims it can support. The name
meta-flag is a synonym for this variable.
isearch-terminators (’’C-[C-J’’)
The string of characters that should terminate an incremental
search without subsequently executing the character as a command.
If this variable has not been given a value, the characters
ESC and C-J will terminate an incremental search.
keymap (emacs)
Set the current readline keymap. The set of valid keymap names
is emacs, emacs-standard, emacs-meta, emacs-ctlx, vi, vi-com_mand,
and vi-insert. vi is equivalent to vi-command; emacs is
equivalent to emacs-standard. The default value is emacs; the
value of editing-mode also affects the default keymap.
mark-directories (On)
If set to On, completed directory names have a slash appended.
mark-modified-lines (Off)
If set to On, history lines that have been modified are displayed
with a preceding asterisk (*).
mark-symlinked-directories (Off)
If set to On, completed names which are symbolic links to directories
have a slash appended (subject to the value of
mark-directories).
match-hidden-files (On)
This variable, when set to On, causes readline to match files
whose names begin with a ‘.’ (hidden files) when performing
filename completion, unless the leading ‘.’ is supplied by the
user in the filename to be completed.
output-meta (Off)
If set to On, readline will display characters with the eighth
bit set directly rather than as a meta-prefixed escape sequence.
page-completions (On)
If set to On, readline uses an internal more-like pager to display
a screenful of possible completions at a time.
print-completions-horizontally (Off)
If set to On, readline will display completions with matches
sorted horizontally in alphabetical order, rather than down the
screen.
show-all-if-ambiguous (Off)
This alters the default behavior of the completion functions.
If set to on, words which have more than one possible completion
cause the matches to be listed immediately instead of ringing
the bell.
show-all-if-unmodified (Off)
This alters the default behavior of the completion functions in
a fashion similar to show-all-if-ambiguous. If set to on, words
which have more than one possible completion without any possible
partial completion (the possible completions don’t share a
common prefix) cause the matches to be listed immediately
instead of ringing the bell.
visible-stats (Off)
If set to On, a character denoting a file’s type as reported by
stat(2)
is appended to the filename when listing possible completions.
Readline Conditional Constructs
Readline implements a facility similar in spirit to the conditional
compilation features of the C preprocessor which allows key bindings
and variable settings to be performed as the result of tests. There
are four parser directives used.
mode The mode= form of the $if directive is used to test whether readline is in emacs or vi mode. This may be used in conjunction with the set keymap command, for instance, to set bindings in the emacs-standard and emacs-ctlx keymaps only if readline is starting out in emacs mode.
term The term= form may be used to include terminal-specific key bindings, perhaps to bind the key sequences output by the terminal’s function keys. The word on the right side of the = is tested against the both full name of the terminal and the portion of the terminal name before the first -. This allows sun to match both sun and sun-cmd, for instance.
application
The application construct is used to include applicationspecific
settings. Each program using the readline
library sets the application name, and an initialization
file can test for a particular value. This could be used
to bind key sequences to functions useful for a specific
program. For instance, the following command adds a key
sequence that quotes the current or previous word in
Bash:
$if Bash
# Quote the current or previous word
“\C-xq": “\eb\"\ef\""
$endif
$endif This command, as seen in the previous example, terminates an $if command.
$else Commands in this branch of the $if directive are executed if the test fails.
$include
This directive takes a single filename as an argument and reads
commands and bindings from that file. For example, the following
directive would read /etc/inputrc:
$include /etc/inputrc
Searching
Readline provides commands for searching through the command history
(see HISTORY below) for lines containing a specified string. There are
two search modes: incremental and non-incremental.
Incremental searches begin before the user has finished typing the search string. As each character of the search string is typed, readline displays the next entry from the history matching the string typed so far. An incremental search requires only as many characters as needed to find the desired history entry. The characters present in the value of the isearch-terminators variable are used to terminate an incremental search. If that variable has not been assigned a value the Escape and Control-J characters will terminate an incremental search. Control-G will abort an incremental search and restore the original line. When the search is terminated, the history entry containing the search string becomes the current line.
To find other matching entries in the history list, type Control-S or Control-R as appropriate. This will search backward or forward in the history for the next entry matching the search string typed so far. Any other key sequence bound to a readline command will terminate the search and execute that command. For instance, a newline will terminate the search and accept the line, thereby executing the command from the history list.
Readline remembers the last incremental search string. If two ControlRs are typed without any intervening characters defining a new search string, any remembered search string is used.
Non-incremental searches read the entire search string before starting to search for matching history lines. The search string may be typed by the user or be part of the contents of the current line.
Readline Command Names
The following is a list of the names of the commands and the default
key sequences to which they are bound. Command names without an accompanying
key sequence are unbound by default. In the following descriptions,
point refers to the current cursor position, and mark refers to
a cursor position saved by the set-mark command. The text between the
point and mark is referred to as the region.
Commands for Moving
beginning-of-line (C-a)
Move to the start of the current line.
end-of-line (C-e)
Move to the end of the line.
forward-char (C-f)
Move forward a character.
backward-char (C-b)
Move back a character.
forward-word (M-f)
Move forward to the end of the next word. Words are composed of
alphanumeric characters (letters and digits).
backward-word (M-b)
Move back to the start of the current or previous word. Words
are composed of alphanumeric characters (letters and digits).
clear-screen (C-l)
Clear the screen leaving the current line at the top of the
screen. With an argument, refresh the current line without
clearing the screen.
redraw-current-line
Refresh the current line.
Commands for Manipulating the History
accept-line (Newline, Return)
Accept the line regardless of where the cursor is. If this line
is non-empty, add it to the history list according to the state
of the HISTCONTROL variable. If the line is a modified history
line, then restore the history line to its original state.
previous-history (C-p)
Fetch the previous command from the history list, moving back in
the list.
next-history (C-n)
Fetch the next command from the history list, moving forward in
the list.
beginning-of-history (M-<)
Move to the first line in the history.
end-of-history (M->)
Move to the end of the input history, i.e., the line currently
being entered.
reverse-search-history (C-r)
Search backward starting at the current line and moving ‘up’
through the history as necessary. This is an incremental
search.
forward-search-history (C-s)
Search forward starting at the current line and moving ‘down’
through the history as necessary. This is an incremental
search.
non-incremental-reverse-search-history (M-p)
Search backward through the history starting at the current line
using a non-incremental search for a string supplied by the
user.
non-incremental-forward-search-history (M-n)
Search forward through the history using a non-incremental
search for a string supplied by the user.
history-search-forward
Search forward through the history for the string of characters
between the start of the current line and the point. This is a
non-incremental search.
history-search-backward
Search backward through the history for the string of characters
between the start of the current line and the point. This is a
non-incremental search.
yank-nth-arg (M-C-y)
Insert the first argument to the previous command (usually the
second word on the previous line) at point. With an argument n,
insert the nth word from the previous command (the words in the
previous command begin with word 0). A negative argument
inserts the nth word from the end of the previous command. Once
the argument n is computed, the argument is extracted as if the
“!n” history expansion had been specified.
yank-last-arg (M-., M-_)
Insert the last argument to the previous command (the last word
of the previous history entry). With an argument, behave
exactly like yank-nth-arg. Successive calls to yank-last-arg
move back through the history list, inserting the last argument
of each line in turn. The history expansion facilities are used
to extract the last argument, as if the “!$” history expansion
had been specified.
shell-expand-line (M-C-e)
Expand the line as the shell does. This performs alias and history
expansion as well as all of the shell word expansions. See
HISTORY EXPANSION below for a description of history expansion.
history-expand-line (M-^)
Perform history expansion on the current line. See HISTORY
EXPANSION below for a description of history expansion.
magic-space
Perform history expansion on the current line and insert a
space. See HISTORY EXPANSION below for a description of history
expansion.
alias-expand-line
Perform alias expansion on the current line. See ALIASES above
for a description of alias expansion.
history-and-alias-expand-line
Perform history and alias expansion on the current line.
insert-last-argument (M-., M-_)
A synonym for yank-last-arg.
operate-and-get-next (C-o)
Accept the current line for execution and fetch the next line
relative to the current line from the history for editing. Any
argument is ignored.
edit-and-execute-command (C-xC-e)
Invoke an editor on the current command line, and execute the
result as shell commands. Bash attempts to invoke $FCEDIT,
$EDITOR, and emacs as the editor, in that order.
Commands for Changing Text
delete-char (C-d)
Delete the character at point. If point is at the beginning of
the line, there are no characters in the line, and the last
character typed was not bound to delete-char, then return EOF.
backward-delete-char (Rubout)
Delete the character behind the cursor. When given a numeric
argument, save the deleted text on the kill ring.
forward-backward-delete-char
Delete the character under the cursor, unless the cursor is at
the end of the line, in which case the character behind the cursor
is deleted.
quoted-insert (C-q, C-v)
Add the next character typed to the line verbatim. This is how
to insert characters like C-q, for example.
tab-insert (C-v TAB)
Insert a tab character.
self-insert (a, b, A, 1, !, ...)
Insert the character typed.
transpose-chars (C-t)
Drag the character before point forward over the character at
point, moving point forward as well. If point is at the end of
the line, then this transposes the two characters before point.
Negative arguments have no effect.
transpose-words (M-t)
Drag the word before point past the word after point, moving
point over that word as well. If point is at the end of the
line, this transposes the last two words on the line.
upcase-word (M-u)
Uppercase the current (or following) word. With a negative
argument, uppercase the previous word, but do not move point.
downcase-word (M-l)
Lowercase the current (or following) word. With a negative
argument, lowercase the previous word, but do not move point.
capitalize-word (M-c)
Capitalize the current (or following) word. With a negative
argument, capitalize the previous word, but do not move point.
overwrite-mode
Toggle overwrite mode. With an explicit positive numeric argument,
switches to overwrite mode. With an explicit non-positive
numeric argument, switches to insert mode. This command affects
only emacs mode; vi mode does overwrite differently. Each call
to readline() starts in insert mode. In overwrite mode, characters
bound to self-insert replace the text at point rather than
pushing the text to the right. Characters bound to backward-delete-char
replace the character before point with a
space. By default, this command is unbound.
Killing and Yanking
kill-line (C-k)
Kill the text from point to the end of the line.
backward-kill-line (C-x Rubout)
Kill backward to the beginning of the line.
unix-line-discard (C-u)
Kill backward from point to the beginning of the line. The
killed text is saved on the kill-ring.
kill-whole-line
Kill all characters on the current line, no matter where point
is.
kill-word (M-d)
Kill from point to the end of the current word, or if between
words, to the end of the next word. Word boundaries are the
same as those used by forward-word.
backward-kill-word (M-Rubout)
Kill the word behind point. Word boundaries are the same as
those used by backward-word.
unix-word-rubout (C-w)
Kill the word behind point, using white space as a word boundary.
The killed text is saved on the kill-ring.
unix-filename-rubout
Kill the word behind point, using white space and the slash
character as the word boundaries. The killed text is saved on
the kill-ring.
delete-horizontal-space (M-\)
Delete all spaces and tabs around point.
kill-region
Kill the text in the current region.
copy-region-as-kill
Copy the text in the region to the kill buffer.
copy-backward-word
Copy the word before point to the kill buffer. The word boundaries
are the same as backward-word.
copy-forward-word
Copy the word following point to the kill buffer. The word
boundaries are the same as forward-word.
yank (C-y)
Yank the top of the kill ring into the buffer at point.
yank-pop (M-y)
Rotate the kill ring, and yank the new top. Only works following
yank or yank-pop.
Numeric Arguments
digit-argument (M-0, M-1, ..., M--)
Add this digit to the argument already accumulating, or start a
new argument. M-- starts a negative argument.
universal-argument
This is another way to specify an argument. If this command is
followed by one or more digits, optionally with a leading minus
sign, those digits define the argument. If the command is followed
by digits, executing universal-argument again ends the
numeric argument, but is otherwise ignored. As a special case,
if this command is immediately followed by a character that is
neither a digit or minus sign, the argument count for the next
command is multiplied by four. The argument count is initially
one, so executing this function the first time makes the argument
count four, a second time makes the argument count sixteen,
and so on.
Completing
complete (TAB)
Attempt to perform completion on the text before point. Bash
attempts completion treating the text as a variable (if the text
begins with $), username (if the text begins with ~), hostname
(if the text begins with @), or command (including aliases and
functions) in turn. If none of these produces a match, filename
completion is attempted.
possible-completions (M-?)
List the possible completions of the text before point.
insert-completions (M-*)
Insert all completions of the text before point that would have
been generated by possible-completions.
menu-complete
Similar to complete, but replaces the word to be completed with
a single match from the list of possible completions. Repeated
execution of menu-complete steps through the list of possible
completions, inserting each match in turn. At the end of the
list of completions, the bell is rung (subject to the setting of
bell-style) and the original text is restored. An argument of n
moves n positions forward in the list of matches; a negative
argument may be used to move backward through the list. This
command is intended to be bound to TAB, but is unbound by
default.
delete-char-or-list
Deletes the character under the cursor if not at the beginning
or end of the line (like delete-char). If at the end of the
line, behaves identically to possible-completions. This command
is unbound by default.
complete-filename (M-/)
Attempt filename completion on the text before point.
possible-filename-completions (C-x /)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating
it as a filename.
complete-username (M-~)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a
username.
possible-username-completions (C-x ~)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating
it as a username.
complete-variable (M-$)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a
shell variable.
possible-variable-completions (C-x $)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating
it as a shell variable.
complete-hostname (M-@)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a
hostname.
possible-hostname-completions (C-x @)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating
it as a hostname.
complete-command (M-!)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a
command name. Command completion attempts to match the text
against aliases, reserved words, shell functions, shell
builtins, and finally executable filenames, in that order.
possible-command-completions (C-x !)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating
it as a command name.
dynamic-complete-history (M-TAB)
Attempt completion on the text before point, comparing the text
against lines from the history list for possible completion
matches.
complete-into-braces (M-{)
Perform filename completion and insert the list of possible completions
enclosed within braces so the list is available to the
shell (see Brace Expansion above).
Keyboard Macros
start-kbd-macro (C-x ()
Begin saving the characters typed into the current keyboard
macro.
end-kbd-macro (C-x ))
Stop saving the characters typed into the current keyboard macro
and store the definition.
call-last-kbd-macro (C-x e)
Re-execute the last keyboard macro defined, by making the characters
in the macro appear as if typed at the keyboard.
Miscellaneous
re-read-init-file (C-x C-r)
Read in the contents of the inputrc file, and incorporate any
bindings or variable assignments found there.
abort (C-g)
Abort the current editing command and ring the terminal’s bell
(subject to the setting of bell-style).
do-uppercase-version (M-a, M-b, M-x, ...)
If the metafied character x is lowercase, run the command that
is bound to the corresponding uppercase character.
prefix-meta (ESC)
Metafy the next character typed. ESC f is equivalent to Meta-f.
undo (C-_, C-x C-u)
Incremental undo, separately remembered for each line.
revert-line (M-r)
Undo all changes made to this line. This is like executing the
undo command enough times to return the line to its initial
state.
tilde-expand (M-&)
Perform tilde expansion on the current word.
set-mark (C-@, M-<space>)
Set the mark to the point. If a numeric argument is supplied,
the mark is set to that position.
exchange-point-and-mark (C-x C-x)
Swap the point with the mark. The current cursor position is
set to the saved position, and the old cursor position is saved
as the mark.
character-search (C-])
A character is read and point is moved to the next occurrence of
that character. A negative count searches for previous occurrences.
character-search-backward (M-C-])
A character is read and point is moved to the previous occurrence
of that character. A negative count searches for subsequent
occurrences.
insert-comment (M-#)
Without a numeric argument, the value of the readline comment-begin
variable is inserted at the beginning of the current
line. If a numeric argument is supplied, this command acts as a
toggle: if the characters at the beginning of the line do not
match the value of comment-begin, the value is inserted, otherwise
the characters in comment-begin are deleted from the beginning
of the line. In either case, the line is accepted as if a
newline had been typed. The default value of comment-begin
causes this command to make the current line a shell comment.
If a numeric argument causes the comment character to be
removed, the line will be executed by the shell.
glob-complete-word (M-g)
The word before point is treated as a pattern for pathname
expansion, with an asterisk implicitly appended. This pattern
is used to generate a list of matching file names for possible
completions.
glob-expand-word (C-x *)
The word before point is treated as a pattern for pathname
expansion, and the list of matching file names is inserted,
replacing the word. If a numeric argument is supplied, an
asterisk is appended before pathname expansion.
glob-list-expansions (C-x g)
The list of expansions that would have been generated by
glob-expand-word is displayed, and the line is redrawn. If a
numeric argument is supplied, an asterisk is appended before
pathname expansion.
dump-functions
Print all of the functions and their key bindings to the readline
output stream. If a numeric argument is supplied, the
output is formatted in such a way that it can be made part of an
inputrc file.
dump-variables
Print all of the settable readline variables and their values to
the readline output stream. If a numeric argument is supplied,
the output is formatted in such a way that it can be made part
of an inputrc file.
dump-macros
Print all of the readline key sequences bound to macros and the
strings they output. If a numeric argument is supplied, the
output is formatted in such a way that it can be made part of an
inputrc file.
display-shell-version (C-x C-v)
Display version information about the current instance of bash.
Programmable Completion
When word completion is attempted for an argument to a command for
which a completion specification (a compspec) has been defined using
the complete builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below), the programmable
completion facilities are invoked.
First, the command name is identified. If a compspec has been defined for that command, the compspec is used to generate the list of possible completions for the word. If the command word is a full pathname, a compspec for the full pathname is searched for first. If no compspec is found for the full pathname, an attempt is made to find a compspec for the portion following the final slash.
Once a compspec has been found, it is used to generate the list of matching words. If a compspec is not found, the default bash completion as described above under Completing is performed.
First, the actions specified by the compspec are used. Only matches which are prefixed by the word being completed are returned. When the -f or -d option is used for filename or directory name completion, the shell variable FIGNORE is used to filter the matches.
Any completions specified by a filename expansion pattern to the -G option are generated next. The words generated by the pattern need not match the word being completed. The GLOBIGNORE shell variable is not used to filter the matches, but the FIGNORE variable is used.
Next, the string specified as the argument to the -W option is considered. The string is first split using the characters in the IFS special variable as delimiters. Shell quoting is honored. Each word is then expanded using brace expansion, tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion, as described above under EXPANSION. The results are split using the rules described above under Word Splitting. The results of the expansion are prefix-matched against the word being completed, and the matching words become the possible completions.
After these matches have been generated, any shell function or command specified with the -F and -C options is invoked. When the command or function is invoked, the COMP_LINE and COMP_POINT variables are assigned values as described above under Shell Variables. If a shell function is being invoked, the COMP_WORDS and COMP_CWORD variables are also set. When the function or command is invoked, the first argument is the name of the command whose arguments are being completed, the second argument is the word being completed, and the third argument is the word preceding the word being completed on the current command line. No filtering of the generated completions against the word being completed is performed; the function or command has complete freedom in generating the matches.
Any function specified with -F is invoked first. The function may use any of the shell facilities, including the compgen builtin described below, to generate the matches. It must put the possible completions in the COMPREPLY array variable.
Next, any command specified with the -C option is invoked in an environment equivalent to command substitution. It should print a list of completions, one per line, to the standard output. Backslash may be used to escape a newline, if necessary.
After all of the possible completions are generated, any filter specified with the -X option is applied to the list. The filter is a pattern as used for pathname expansion; a & in the pattern is replaced with the text of the word being completed. A literal & may be escaped with a backslash; the backslash is removed before attempting a match. Any completion that matches the pattern will be removed from the list. A leading ! negates the pattern; in this case any completion not matching the pattern will be removed.
Finally, any prefix and suffix specified with the -P and -S options are added to each member of the completion list, and the result is returned to the readline completion code as the list of possible completions.
If the previously-applied actions do not generate any matches, and the -o dirnames option was supplied to complete when the compspec was defined, directory name completion is attempted.
If the -o plusdirs option was supplied to complete when the compspec was defined, directory name completion is attempted and any matches are added to the results of the other actions.
By default, if a compspec is found, whatever it generates is returned to the completion code as the full set of possible completions. The default bash completions are not attempted, and the readline default of filename completion is disabled. If the -o bashdefault option was supplied to complete when the compspec was defined, the bash default completions are attempted if the compspec generates no matches. If the -o default option was supplied to complete when the compspec was defined, readline’s default completion will be performed if the compspec (and, if attempted, the default bash completions) generate no matches.
When a compspec indicates that directory name completion is desired, the programmable completion functions force readline to append a slash to completed names which are symbolic links to directories, subject to the value of the mark-directories readline variable, regardless of the setting of the mark-symlinked-directories readline variable.
When the -o history option to the set builtin is enabled, the shell provides access to the command history, the list of commands previously typed. The value of the HISTSIZE variable is used as the number of commands to save in a history list. The text of the last HISTSIZE commands (default 500) is saved. The shell stores each command in the history list prior to parameter and variable expansion (see EXPANSION above) but after history expansion is performed, subject to the values of the shell variables HISTIGNORE and HISTCONTROL.
On startup, the history is initialized from the file named by the variable HISTFILE (default ~/.bash_history). The file named by the value of HISTFILE is truncated, if necessary, to contain no more than the number of lines specified by the value of HISTFILESIZE. When an interactive shell exits, the last $HISTSIZE lines are copied from the history list to $HISTFILE. If the histappend shell option is enabled (see the description of shopt under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below), the lines are appended to the history file, otherwise the history file is overwritten. If HISTFILE is unset, or if the history file is unwritable, the history is not saved. After saving the history, the history file is truncated to contain no more than HISTFILESIZE lines. If HISTFILESIZE is not set, no truncation is performed.
The builtin command fc (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) may be used to list or edit and re-execute a portion of the history list. The history builtin may be used to display or modify the history list and manipulate the history file. When using command-line editing, search commands are available in each editing mode that provide access to the history list.
The shell allows control over which commands are saved on the history list. The HISTCONTROL and HISTIGNORE variables may be set to cause the shell to save only a subset of the commands entered. The cmdhist shell option, if enabled, causes the shell to attempt to save each line of a multi-line command in the same history entry, adding semicolons where necessary to preserve syntactic correctness. The lithist shell option causes the shell to save the command with embedded newlines instead of semicolons. See the description of the shopt builtin below under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS for information on setting and unsetting shell options.
The shell supports a history expansion feature that is similar to the history expansion in csh. This section describes what syntax features are available. This feature is enabled by default for interactive shells, and can be disabled using the +H option to the set builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). Non-interactive shells do not perform history expansion by default.
History expansions introduce words from the history list into the input stream, making it easy to repeat commands, insert the arguments to a previous command into the current input line, or fix errors in previous commands quickly.
History expansion is performed immediately after a complete line is read, before the shell breaks it into words. It takes place in two parts. The first is to determine which line from the history list to use during substitution. The second is to select portions of that line for inclusion into the current one. The line selected from the history is the event, and the portions of that line that are acted upon are words. Various modifiers are available to manipulate the selected words. The line is broken into words in the same fashion as when reading input, so that several metacharacter-separated words surrounded by quotes are considered one word. History expansions are introduced by the appearance of the history expansion character, which is ! by default. Only backslash (\) and single quotes can quote the history expansion character.
Several characters inhibit history expansion if found immediately following the history expansion character, even if it is unquoted: space, tab, newline, carriage return, and =. If the extglob shell option is enabled, ( will also inhibit expansion.
Several shell options settable with the shopt builtin may be used to tailor the behavior of history expansion. If the histverify shell option is enabled (see the description of the shopt builtin), and readline is being used, history substitutions are not immediately passed to the shell parser. Instead, the expanded line is reloaded into the readline editing buffer for further modification. If readline is being used, and the histreedit shell option is enabled, a failed history substitution will be reloaded into the readline editing buffer for correction. The -p option to the history builtin command may be used to see what a history expansion will do before using it. The -s option to the history builtin may be used to add commands to the end of the history list without actually executing them, so that they are available for subsequent recall.
The shell allows control of the various characters used by the history expansion mechanism (see the description of histchars above under Shell Variables).
Event Designators
An event designator is a reference to a command line entry in the history
list.
Word Designators
Word designators are used to select desired words from the event. A :
separates the event specification from the word designator. It may be
omitted if the word designator begins with a ^, $, *, -, or %. Words
are numbered from the beginning of the line, with the first word being
denoted by 0 (zero). Words are inserted into the current line separated
by single spaces.
0 (zero)
The zeroth word. For the shell, this is the command word.
If a word designator is supplied without an event specification, the previous command is used as the event.
Modifiers
After the optional word designator, there may appear a sequence of one
or more of the following modifiers, each preceded by a ‘:’.
Unless otherwise noted, each builtin command documented in this section
as accepting options preceded by - accepts -- to signify the end of the
options. For example, the :, true, false, and test builtins do not
accept options.
: [arguments]
No effect; the command does nothing beyond expanding arguments
and performing any specified redirections. A zero exit code is
returned.
alias [-p] [name[=value] ...]
Alias with no arguments or with the -p option prints the list of
aliases in the form alias name=value on standard output. When
arguments are supplied, an alias is defined for each name whose
value is given. A trailing space in value causes the next word
to be checked for alias substitution when the alias is expanded.
For each name in the argument list for which no value is supplied,
the name and value of the alias is printed. Alias
returns true unless a name is given for which no alias has been
defined.
bg [jobspec ...]
Resume each suspended job jobspec in the background, as if it
had been started with &. If jobspec is not present, the shell’s
notion of the current job is used. bg jobspec returns 0 unless
run when job control is disabled or, when run with job control
enabled, any specified jobspec was not found or was started
without job control.
bind [-m keymap] [-lpsvPSV]
bind [-m keymap] [-q function] [-u function] [-r keyseq]
bind [-m keymap] -f filename
bind [-m keymap] -x keyseq:shell-command
bind [-m keymap] keyseq:function-name
bind readline-command
Display current readline key and function bindings, bind a key
sequence to a readline function or macro, or set a readline
variable. Each non-option argument is a command as it would
appear in .inputrc, but each binding or command must be passed
as a separate argument; e.g., ‘"\C-x\C-r": re-read-init-file’.
Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:
-m keymap
Use keymap as the keymap to be affected by the subsequent
bindings. Acceptable keymap names are emacs, emacs-stan_dard,
emacs-meta, emacs-ctlx, vi, vi-move, vi-command,
and vi-insert. vi is equivalent to vi-command; emacs is
equivalent to emacs-standard.
The return value is 0 unless an unrecognized option is given or an error occurred.
break [n]
Exit from within a for, while, until, or select loop. If n is
specified, break n levels. n must be >= 1. If n is greater than
the number of enclosing loops, all enclosing loops are exited.
The return value is 0 unless the shell is not executing a loop
when break is executed.
builtin shell-builtin [arguments]
Execute the specified shell builtin, passing it arguments, and
return its exit status. This is useful when defining a function
whose name is the same as a shell builtin, retaining the functionality
of the builtin within the function. The cd builtin is
commonly redefined this way. The return status is false if
shell-builtin is not a shell builtin command.
cd [-L|-P] [dir]
Change the current directory to dir. The variable HOME is the
default dir. The variable CDPATH defines the search path for
the directory containing dir. Alternative directory names in
CDPATH are separated by a colon (:). A null directory name in
CDPATH is the same as the current directory, i.e., ‘’.’’. If
dir begins with a slash (/), then CDPATH is not used. The -P
option says to use the physical directory structure instead of
following symbolic links (see also the -P option to the set
builtin command); the -L option forces symbolic links to be followed.
An argument of - is equivalent to $OLDPWD. If a nonempty
directory name from CDPATH is used, or if - is the first
argument, and the directory change is successful, the absolute
pathname of the new working directory is written to the standard
output. The return value is true if the directory was successfully
changed; false otherwise.
caller [expr]
Returns the context of any active subroutine call (a shell function
or a script executed with the . or source builtins. Without
expr, caller displays the line number and source filename of
the current subroutine call. If a non-negative integer is supplied
as expr, caller displays the line number, subroutine name,
and source file corresponding to that position in the current
execution call stack. This extra information may be used, for
example, to print a stack trace. The current frame is frame 0.
The return value is 0 unless the shell is not executing a subroutine
call or expr does not correspond to a valid position in
the call stack.
command [-pVv] command [arg ...]
Run command with args suppressing the normal shell function
lookup. Only builtin commands or commands found in the PATH are
executed. If the -p option is given, the search for command is
performed using a default value for PATH that is guaranteed to
find all of the standard utilities. If either the -V or -v
option is supplied, a description of command is printed. The -v
option causes a single word indicating the command or file name
used to invoke command to be displayed; the -V option produces a
more verbose description. If the -V or -v option is supplied,
the exit status is 0 if command was found, and 1 if not. If
neither option is supplied and an error occurred or command cannot
be found, the exit status is 127. Otherwise, the exit status
of the command builtin is the exit status of command.
compgen [option] [word]
Generate possible completion matches for word according to the
options, which may be any option accepted by the complete
builtin with the exception of -p and -r, and write the matches
to the standard output. When using the -F or -C options, the
various shell variables set by the programmable completion
facilities, while available, will not have useful values.
The matches will be generated in the same way as if the programmable completion code had generated them directly from a completion specification with the same flags. If word is specified, only those completions matching word will be displayed.
The return value is true unless an invalid option is supplied, or no matches were generated.
complete [-abcdefgjksuv] [-o comp-option] [-A action] [-G globpat] [-W
wordlist] [-P prefix] [-S suffix]
[-X filterpat] [-F function] [-C command] name [name ...]
complete -pr [name ...]
Specify how arguments to each name should be completed. If the
-p option is supplied, or if no options are supplied, existing
completion specifications are printed in a way that allows them
to be reused as input. The -r option removes a completion specification
for each name, or, if no names are supplied, all completion
specifications.
The process of applying these completion specifications when word completion is attempted is described above under Programmable Completion.
Other options, if specified, have the following meanings. The
arguments to the -G, -W, and -X options (and, if necessary, the
-P and -S options) should be quoted to protect them from expansion
before the complete builtin is invoked.
-o comp-option
The comp-option controls several aspects of the compspec’s
behavior beyond the simple generation of
completions. comp-option may be one of:
bashdefault
Perform the rest of the default bash completions
if the compspec generates no matches.
default Use readline’s default filename completion if
the compspec generates no matches.
dirnames
Perform directory name completion if the compspec
generates no matches.
filenames
Tell readline that the compspec generates filenames,
so it can perform any filename-specific
processing (like adding a slash to directory
names or suppressing trailing spaces). Intended
to be used with shell functions.
nospace Tell readline not to append a space (the
default) to words completed at the end of the
line.
plusdirs
After any matches defined by the compspec are
generated, directory name completion is
attempted and any matches are added to the
results of the other actions.
-A action
The action may be one of the following to generate a
list of possible completions:
alias Alias names. May also be specified as -a.
arrayvar
Array variable names.
binding Readline key binding names.
builtin Names of shell builtin commands. May also be
specified as -b.
command Command names. May also be specified as -c.
directory
Directory names. May also be specified as -d.
disabled
Names of disabled shell builtins.
enabled Names of enabled shell builtins.
export Names of exported shell variables. May also be
specified as -e.
The return value is true unless an invalid option is supplied, an option other than -p or -r is supplied without a name argument, an attempt is made to remove a completion specification for a name for which no specification exists, or an error occurs adding a completion specification.
continue [n]
Resume the next iteration of the enclosing for, while, until, or
select loop. If n is specified, resume at the nth enclosing
loop. n must be >= 1. If n is greater than the number of
enclosing loops, the last enclosing loop (the ‘’top-level’’
loop) is resumed. The return value is 0 unless the shell is not
executing a loop when continue is executed.
declare [-afFirtx] [-p] [name[=value] ...]
typeset [-afFirtx] [-p] [name[=value] ...]
Declare variables and/or give them attributes. If no names are
given then display the values of variables. The -p option will
display the attributes and values of each name. When -p is
used, additional options are ignored. The -F option inhibits
the display of function definitions; only the function name and
attributes are printed. If the extdebug shell option is enabled
using shopt, the source file name and line number where the
function is defined are displayed as well. The -F option
implies -f. The following options can be used to restrict output
to variables with the specified attribute or to give variables
attributes:
Using ‘+’ instead of ‘-’ turns off the attribute instead, with the exception that +a may not be used to destroy an array variable. When used in a function, makes each name local, as with the local command. If a variable name is followed by =value, the value of the variable is set to value. The return value is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered, an attempt is made to define a function using ‘’-f foo=bar’’, an attempt is made to assign a value to a readonly variable, an attempt is made to assign a value to an array variable without using the compound assignment syntax (see Arrays above), one of the names is not a valid shell variable name, an attempt is made to turn off readonly status for a readonly variable, an attempt is made to turn off array status for an array variable, or an attempt is made to display a non-existent function with -f.
dirs [-clpv] [+n] [-n]
Without options, displays the list of currently remembered
directories. The default display is on a single line with
directory names separated by spaces. Directories are added to
the list with the pushd command; the popd command removes
entries from the list.
The return value is 0 unless an invalid option is supplied or n indexes beyond the end of the directory stack.
disown [-ar] [-h] [jobspec ...]
Without options, each jobspec is removed from the table of
active jobs. If the -h option is given, each jobspec is not
removed from the table, but is marked so that SIGHUP is not sent
to the job if the shell receives a SIGHUP. If no jobspec is
present, and neither the -a nor the -r option is supplied, the
current job is used. If no jobspec is supplied, the -a option
means to remove or mark all jobs; the -r option without a job_spec
argument restricts operation to running jobs. The return
value is 0 unless a jobspec does not specify a valid job.
echo [-neE] [arg ...]
Output the args, separated by spaces, followed by a newline.
The return status is always 0. If -n is specified, the trailing
newline is suppressed. If the -e option is given, interpretation
of the following backslash-escaped characters is enabled.
The -E option disables the interpretation of these escape characters,
even on systems where they are interpreted by default.
The xpg_echo shell option may be used to dynamically determine
whether or not echo expands these escape characters by default.
echo does not interpret -- to mean the end of options. echo
interprets the following escape sequences:
enable [-adnps] [-f filename] [name ...] Enable and disable builtin shell commands. Disabling a builtin allows a disk command which has the same name as a shell builtin to be executed without specifying a full pathname, even though the shell normally searches for builtins before disk commands. If -n is used, each name is disabled; otherwise, names are enabled. For example, to use the test binary found via the PATH instead of the shell builtin version, run ‘’enable -n test’’. The -f option means to load the new builtin command name from shared object filename, on systems that support dynamic loading. The -d option will delete a builtin previously loaded with -f. If no name arguments are given, or if the -p option is supplied, a list of shell builtins is printed. With no other option arguments, the list consists of all enabled shell builtins. If -n is supplied, only disabled builtins are printed. If -a is supplied, the list printed includes all builtins, with an indication of whether or not each is enabled. If -s is supplied, the output is restricted to the POSIX special builtins. The return value is 0 unless a name is not a shell builtin or there is an error loading a new builtin from a shared object.
eval [arg ...]
The args are read and concatenated together into a single command.
This command is then read and executed by the shell, and
its exit status is returned as the value of eval. If there are
no args, or only null arguments, eval returns 0.
exec [-cl] [-a name] [command [arguments]] If command is specified, it replaces the shell. No new process is created. The arguments become the arguments to command. If the -l option is supplied, the shell places a dash at the beginning of the zeroth arg passed to command. This is what login(1) does. The -c option causes command to be executed with an empty environment. If -a is supplied, the shell passes name as the zeroth argument to the executed command. If command cannot be executed for some reason, a non-interactive shell exits, unless the shell option execfail is enabled, in which case it returns failure. An interactive shell returns failure if the file cannot be executed. If command is not specified, any redirections take effect in the current shell, and the return status is 0. If there is a redirection error, the return status is 1.
exit [n]
Cause the shell to exit with a status of n. If n is omitted,
the exit status is that of the last command executed. A trap on
EXIT is executed before the shell terminates.
export [-fn] [name[=word]] ...
export -p
The supplied names are marked for automatic export to the environment
of subsequently executed commands. If the -f option is
given, the names refer to functions. If no names are given, or
if the -p option is supplied, a list of all names that are
exported in this shell is printed. The -n option causes the
export property to be removed from each name. If a variable
name is followed by =word, the value of the variable is set to
word. export returns an exit status of 0 unless an invalid
option is encountered, one of the names is not a valid shell
variable name, or -f is supplied with a name that is not a function.
fc [-e ename] [-nlr] [first] [last]
fc -s [pat=rep] [cmd]
Fix Command. In the first form, a range of commands from first
to last is selected from the history list. First and last may
be specified as a string (to locate the last command beginning
with that string) or as a number (an index into the history
list, where a negative number is used as an offset from the current
command number). If last is not specified it is set to the
current command for listing (so that ‘’fc -l -10’’ prints the
last 10 commands) and to first otherwise. If first is not specified
it is set to the previous command for editing and -16 for
listing.
The -n option suppresses the command numbers when listing. The -r option reverses the order of the commands. If the -l option is given, the commands are listed on standard output. Otherwise, the editor given by ename is invoked on a file containing those commands. If ename is not given, the value of the FCEDIT variable is used, and the value of EDITOR if FCEDIT is not set. If neither variable is set, vi is used. When editing is complete, the edited commands are echoed and executed.
In the second form, command is re-executed after each instance of pat is replaced by rep. A useful alias to use with this is ‘’r="fc -s"’’, so that typing ‘’r cc’’ runs the last command beginning with ‘’cc’’ and typing ‘’r’’ re-executes the last command.
If the first form is used, the return value is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered or first or last specify history lines out of range. If the -e option is supplied, the return value is the value of the last command executed or failure if an error occurs with the temporary file of commands. If the second form is used, the return status is that of the command re-executed, unless cmd does not specify a valid history line, in which case fc returns failure.
fg [jobspec]
Resume jobspec in the foreground, and make it the current job.
If jobspec is not present, the shell’s notion of the current job
is used. The return value is that of the command placed into
the foreground, or failure if run when job control is disabled
or, when run with job control enabled, if jobspec does not specify
a valid job or jobspec specifies a job that was started
without job control.
getopts optstring name [args]
getopts is used by shell procedures to parse positional parameters.
optstring contains the option characters to be recognized;
if a character is followed by a colon, the option is
expected to have an argument, which should be separated from it
by white space. The colon and question mark characters may not
be used as option characters. Each time it is invoked, getopts
places the next option in the shell variable name, initializing
name if it does not exist, and the index of the next argument to
be processed into the variable OPTIND. OPTIND is initialized to
1 each time the shell or a shell script is invoked. When an
option requires an argument, getopts places that argument into
the variable OPTARG. The shell does not reset OPTIND automatically;
it must be manually reset between multiple calls to
getopts within the same shell invocation if a new set of parameters
is to be used.
When the end of options is encountered, getopts exits with a return value greater than zero. OPTIND is set to the index of the first non-option argument, and name is set to ?.
getopts normally parses the positional parameters, but if more arguments are given in args, getopts parses those instead.
getopts can report errors in two ways. If the first character of optstring is a colon, silent error reporting is used. In normal operation diagnostic messages are printed when invalid options or missing option arguments are encountered. If the variable OPTERR is set to 0, no error messages will be displayed, even if the first character of optstring is not a colon.
If an invalid option is seen, getopts places ? into name and, if not silent, prints an error message and unsets OPTARG. If getopts is silent, the option character found is placed in OPTARG and no diagnostic message is printed.
If a required argument is not found, and getopts is not silent, a question mark (?) is placed in name, OPTARG is unset, and a diagnostic message is printed. If getopts is silent, then a colon (:) is placed in name and OPTARG is set to the option character found.
getopts returns true if an option, specified or unspecified, is found. It returns false if the end of options is encountered or an error occurs.
hash [-lr] [-p filename] [-dt] [name]
For each name, the full file name of the command is determined
by searching the directories in $PATH and remembered. If the -p
option is supplied, no path search is performed, and filename is
used as the full file name of the command. The -r option causes
the shell to forget all remembered locations. The -d option
causes the shell to forget the remembered location of each name.
If the -t option is supplied, the full pathname to which each
name corresponds is printed. If multiple name arguments are
supplied with -t, the name is printed before the hashed full
pathname. The -l option causes output to be displayed in a format
that may be reused as input. If no arguments are given, or
if only -l is supplied, information about remembered commands is
printed. The return status is true unless a name is not found
or an invalid option is supplied.
help [-s] [pattern]
Display helpful information about builtin commands. If pattern
is specified, help gives detailed help on all commands matching
pattern; otherwise help for all the builtins and shell control
structures is printed. The -s option restricts the information
displayed to a short usage synopsis. The return status is 0
unless no command matches pattern.
history [n]
history -c
history -d offset
history -anrw [filename]
history -p arg [arg ...]
history -s arg [arg ...]
With no options, display the command history list with line numbers.
Lines listed with a * have been modified. An argument of
n lists only the last n lines. If the shell variable HISTTIMEFORMAT
is set and not null, it is used as a format string for
strftime(3)
to display the time stamp associated with each displayed
history entry. No intervening blank is printed between
the formatted time stamp and the history line. If filename is
supplied, it is used as the name of the history file; if not,
the value of HISTFILE is used. Options, if supplied, have the
following meanings:
If the HISTTIMEFORMAT is set, the time stamp information associated with each history entry is written to the history file. The return value is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered, an error occurs while reading or writing the history file, an invalid offset is supplied as an argument to -d, or the history expansion supplied as an argument to -p fails.
jobs [-lnprs] [ jobspec ... ]
jobs -x command [ args ... ]
The first form lists the active jobs. The options have the following
meanings:
If jobspec is given, output is restricted to information about that job. The return status is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered or an invalid jobspec is supplied.
If the -x option is supplied, jobs replaces any jobspec found in command or args with the corresponding process group ID, and executes command passing it args, returning its exit status.
kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] [pid | jobspec] ...
kill -l [sigspec | exit_status]
Send the signal named by sigspec or signum to the processes
named by pid or jobspec. sigspec is either a case-insensitive
signal name such as SIGKILL (with or without the SIG prefix) or
a signal number; signum is a signal number. If sigspec is not
present, then SIGTERM is assumed. An argument of -l lists the
signal names. If any arguments are supplied when -l is given,
the names of the signals corresponding to the arguments are
listed, and the return status is 0. The exit_status argument to
-l is a number specifying either a signal number or the exit
status of a process terminated by a signal. kill returns true
if at least one signal was successfully sent, or false if an
error occurs or an invalid option is encountered.
let arg [arg ...]
Each arg is an arithmetic expression to be evaluated (see ARITHMETIC
EVALUATION). If the last arg evaluates to 0, let returns
1; 0 is returned otherwise.
local [option] [name[=value] ...]
For each argument, a local variable named name is created, and
assigned value. The option can be any of the options accepted
by declare. When local is used within a function, it causes the
variable name to have a visible scope restricted to that function
and its children. With no operands, local writes a list of
local variables to the standard output. It is an error to use
local when not within a function. The return status is 0 unless
local is used outside a function, an invalid name is supplied,
or name is a readonly variable.
logout Exit a login shell.
popd [-n] [+n] [-n]
Removes entries from the directory stack. With no arguments,
removes the top directory from the stack, and performs a cd to
the new top directory. Arguments, if supplied, have the following
meanings:
If the popd command is successful, a dirs is performed as well, and the return status is 0. popd returns false if an invalid option is encountered, the directory stack is empty, a non-existent directory stack entry is specified, or the directory change fails.
printf [-v var] format [arguments]
Write the formatted arguments to the standard output under the
control of the format. The format is a character string which
contains three types of objects: plain characters, which are
simply copied to standard output, character escape sequences,
which are converted and copied to the standard output, and format
specifications, each of which causes printing of the next
successive argument. In addition to the standard printf(1)
formats,
%b causes printf to expand backslash escape sequences in
the corresponding argument (except that \c terminates output,
backslashes in \’, \", and \? are not removed, and octal escapes
beginning with \0 may contain up to four digits), and %q causes
printf to output the corresponding argument in a format that can
be reused as shell input.
The -v option causes the output to be assigned to the variable var rather than being printed to the standard output.
The format is reused as necessary to consume all of the argu_ments. If the format requires more arguments than are supplied, the extra format specifications behave as if a zero value or null string, as appropriate, had been supplied. The return value is zero on success, non-zero on failure.
pushd [-n] [dir]
pushd [-n] [+n] [-n]
Adds a directory to the top of the directory stack, or rotates
the stack, making the new top of the stack the current working
directory. With no arguments, exchanges the top two directories
and returns 0, unless the directory stack is empty. Arguments,
if supplied, have the following meanings:
If the pushd command is successful, a dirs is performed as well. If the first form is used, pushd returns 0 unless the cd to dir fails. With the second form, pushd returns 0 unless the directory stack is empty, a non-existent directory stack element is specified, or the directory change to the specified new current directory fails.
pwd [-LP]
Print the absolute pathname of the current working directory.
The pathname printed contains no symbolic links if the -P option
is supplied or the -o physical option to the set builtin command
is enabled. If the -L option is used, the pathname printed may
contain symbolic links. The return status is 0 unless an error
occurs while reading the name of the current directory or an
invalid option is supplied.
read [-ers] [-u fd] [-t timeout] [-a aname] [-p prompt] [-n nchars] [-d
delim] [name ...]
One line is read from the standard input, or from the file
descriptor fd supplied as an argument to the -u option, and the
first word is assigned to the first name, the second word to the
second name, and so on, with leftover words and their intervening
separators assigned to the last name. If there are fewer
words read from the input stream than names, the remaining names
are assigned empty values. The characters in IFS are used to
split the line into words. The backslash character (\) may be
used to remove any special meaning for the next character read
and for line continuation. Options, if supplied, have the following
meanings:
-a aname
The words are assigned to sequential indices of the array
variable aname, starting at 0. aname is unset before any
new values are assigned. Other name arguments are
ignored.
-d delim
The first character of delim is used to terminate the
input line, rather than newline.
If no names are supplied, the line read is assigned to the variable REPLY. The return code is zero, unless end-of-file is encountered, read times out, or an invalid file descriptor is supplied as the argument to -u.
readonly [-apf] [name[=word] ...]
The given names are marked readonly; the values of these names
may not be changed by subsequent assignment. If the -f option
is supplied, the functions corresponding to the names are so
marked. The -a option restricts the variables to arrays. If no
name arguments are given, or if the -p option is supplied, a
list of all readonly names is printed. The -p option causes
output to be displayed in a format that may be reused as input.
If a variable name is followed by =word, the value of the variable
is set to word. The return status is 0 unless an invalid
option is encountered, one of the names is not a valid shell
variable name, or -f is supplied with a name that is not a function.
return [n]
Causes a function to exit with the return value specified by n.
If n is omitted, the return status is that of the last command
executed in the function body. If used outside a function, but
during execution of a script by the . (source) command, it
causes the shell to stop executing that script and return either
n or the exit status of the last command executed within the
script as the exit status of the script. If used outside a
function and not during execution of a script by ., the return
status is false. Any command associated with the RETURN trap is
executed before execution resumes after the function or script.
set [--abefhkmnptuvxBCHP] [-o option] [arg ...]
Without options, the name and value of each shell variable are
displayed in a format that can be reused as input for setting or
resetting the currently-set variables. Read-only variables cannot
be reset. In posix mode, only shell variables are listed.
The output is sorted according to the current locale. When
options are specified, they set or unset shell attributes. Any
arguments remaining after the options are processed are treated
as values for the positional parameters and are assigned, in
order, to $1, $2, ... $n. Options, if specified, have the following
meanings:
The options are off by default unless otherwise noted. Using + rather than - causes these options to be turned off. The options can also be specified as arguments to an invocation of the shell. The current set of options may be found in $-. The return status is always true unless an invalid option is encountered.
shift [n]
The positional parameters from n+1 ... are renamed to $1 ....
Parameters represented by the numbers $# down to $#-n+1 are
unset. n must be a non-negative number less than or equal to
$#. If n is 0, no parameters are changed. If n is not given,
it is assumed to be 1. If n is greater than $#, the positional
parameters are not changed. The return status is greater than
zero if n is greater than $# or less than zero; otherwise 0.
shopt [-pqsu] [-o] [optname ...]
Toggle the values of variables controlling optional shell behavior.
With no options, or with the -p option, a list of all settable
options is displayed, with an indication of whether or not
each is set. The -p option causes output to be displayed in a
form that may be reused as input. Other options have the following
meanings:
If either -s or -u is used with no optname arguments, the display is limited to those options which are set or unset, respectively. Unless otherwise noted, the shopt options are disabled (unset) by default.
The return status when listing options is zero if all optnames are enabled, non-zero otherwise. When setting or unsetting options, the return status is zero unless an optname is not a valid shell option.
The list of shopt options is:
cdable_vars
If set, an argument to the cd builtin command that is
not a directory is assumed to be the name of a variable
whose value is the directory to change to.
cdspell If set, minor errors in the spelling of a directory component
in a cd command will be corrected. The errors
checked for are transposed characters, a missing character,
and one character too many. If a correction is
found, the corrected file name is printed, and the command
proceeds. This option is only used by interactive
shells.
checkhash
If set, bash checks that a command found in the hash table
exists before trying to execute it. If a hashed
command no longer exists, a normal path search is performed.
checkwinsize
If set, bash checks the window size after each command
and, if necessary, updates the values of LINES and
COLUMNS.
cmdhist If set, bash attempts to save all lines of a multipleline
command in the same history entry. This allows
easy re-editing of multi-line commands.
dotglob If set, bash includes filenames beginning with a ‘.’ in
the results of pathname expansion.
execfail
If set, a non-interactive shell will not exit if it cannot
execute the file specified as an argument to the
exec builtin command. An interactive shell does not
exit if exec fails.
expand_aliases
If set, aliases are expanded as described above under
ALIASES. This option is enabled by default for interactive
shells.
extdebug
If set, behavior intended for use by debuggers is
enabled:
1. The -F option to the declare builtin displays the
source file name and line number corresponding to
each function name supplied as an argument.
2. If the command run by the DEBUG trap returns a
non-zero value, the next command is skipped and
not executed.
3. If the command run by the DEBUG trap returns a
value of 2, and the shell is executing in a subroutine
(a shell function or a shell script executed
by the . or source builtins), a call to
return is simulated.
4. BASH_ARGC and BASH_ARGV are updated as described
in their descriptions above.
5. Function tracing is enabled: command substitution,
shell functions, and subshells invoked with
( command ) inherit the DEBUG and RETURN traps.
6. Error tracing is enabled: command substitution,
shell functions, and subshells invoked with (
command ) inherit the ERROR trap.
extglob If set, the extended pattern matching features described
above under Pathname Expansion are enabled.
extquote
If set, $’string’ and $"string” quoting is performed
within ${parameter} expansions enclosed in double
quotes. This option is enabled by default.
failglob
If set, patterns which fail to match filenames during
pathname expansion result in an expansion error.
force_fignore
If set, the suffixes specified by the FIGNORE shell
variable cause words to be ignored when performing word
completion even if the ignored words are the only possible
completions. See SHELL VARIABLES above for a
description of FIGNORE. This option is enabled by
default.
gnu_errfmt
If set, shell error messages are written in the standard
GNU error message format.
histappend
If set, the history list is appended to the file named
by the value of the HISTFILE variable when the shell
exits, rather than overwriting the file.
histreedit
If set, and readline is being used, a user is given the
opportunity to re-edit a failed history substitution.
histverify
If set, and readline is being used, the results of history
substitution are not immediately passed to the
shell parser. Instead, the resulting line is loaded
into the readline editing buffer, allowing further modification.
hostcomplete
If set, and readline is being used, bash will attempt to
perform hostname completion when a word containing a @
is being completed (see Completing under READLINE
above). This is enabled by default.
huponexit
If set, bash will send SIGHUP to all jobs when an interactive
login shell exits.
interactive_comments
If set, allow a word beginning with # to cause that word
and all remaining characters on that line to be ignored
in an interactive shell (see COMMENTS above). This
option is enabled by default.
lithist If set, and the cmdhist option is enabled, multi-line
commands are saved to the history with embedded newlines
rather than using semicolon separators where possible.
login_shell
The shell sets this option if it is started as a login
shell (see INVOCATION above). The value may not be
changed.
mailwarn
If set, and a file that bash is checking for mail has
been accessed since the last time it was checked, the
message ‘’The mail in mailfile has been read’’ is displayed.
no_empty_cmd_completion
If set, and readline is being used, bash will not
attempt to search the PATH for possible completions when
completion is attempted on an empty line.
nocaseglob
If set, bash matches filenames in a case-insensitive
fashion when performing pathname expansion (see Pathname
Expansion above).
nocasematch
If set, bash matches patterns in a case-insensitive
fashion when performing matching while executing case or
[[ conditional commands.
nullglob
If set, bash allows patterns which match no files (see
Pathname Expansion above) to expand to a null string,
rather than themselves.
progcomp
If set, the programmable completion facilities (see Programmable
Completion above) are enabled. This option is
enabled by default.
promptvars
If set, prompt strings undergo parameter expansion, command
substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote
removal after being expanded as described in PROMPTING
above. This option is enabled by default.
restricted_shell
The shell sets this option if it is started in
restricted mode (see RESTRICTED SHELL below). The value
may not be changed. This is not reset when the startup
files are executed, allowing the startup files to discover
whether or not a shell is restricted.
shift_verbose
If set, the shift builtin prints an error message when
the shift count exceeds the number of positional parameters.
sourcepath
If set, the source (.) builtin uses the value of PATH to
find the directory containing the file supplied as an
argument. This option is enabled by default.
xpg_echo
If set, the echo builtin expands backslash-escape
sequences by default.
suspend [-f]
Suspend the execution of this shell until it receives a SIGCONT
signal. The -f option says not to complain if this is a login
shell; just suspend anyway. The return status is 0 unless the
shell is a login shell and -f is not supplied, or if job control
is not enabled.
test expr
[ expr ]
Return a status of 0 or 1 depending on the evaluation of the
conditional expression expr. Each operator and operand must be
a separate argument. Expressions are composed of the primaries
described above under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS. test does not
accept any options, nor does it accept and ignore an argument of
-- as signifying the end of options.
Expressions may be combined using the following operators,
listed in decreasing order of precedence.
! expr True if expr is false.
( expr )
Returns the value of expr. This may be used to override
the normal precedence of operators.
expr1 -a expr2
True if both expr1 and expr2 are true.
expr1 -o expr2
True if either expr1 or expr2 is true.
test and [ evaluate conditional expressions using a set of rules based on the number of arguments.
0 arguments
The expression is false.
1 argument
The expression is true if and only if the argument is not
null.
2 arguments
If the first argument is !, the expression is true if and
only if the second argument is null. If the first argument
is one of the unary conditional operators listed
above under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS, the expression is
true if the unary test is true. If the first argument is
not a valid unary conditional operator, the expression is
false.
3 arguments
If the second argument is one of the binary conditional
operators listed above under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS, the
result of the expression is the result of the binary test
using the first and third arguments as operands. If the
first argument is !, the value is the negation of the
two-argument test using the second and third arguments.
If the first argument is exactly ( and the third argument
is exactly ), the result is the one-argument test of the
second argument. Otherwise, the expression is false.
The -a and -o operators are considered binary operators
in this case.
4 arguments
If the first argument is !, the result is the negation of
the three-argument expression composed of the remaining
arguments. Otherwise, the expression is parsed and evaluated
according to precedence using the rules listed
above.
5 or more arguments
The expression is parsed and evaluated according to
precedence using the rules listed above.
times Print the accumulated user and system times for the shell and for processes run from the shell. The return status is 0.
trap [-lp] [[arg] sigspec ...]
The command arg is to be read and executed when the shell
receives signal(s) sigspec. If arg is absent (and there is a
single sigspec) or -, each specified signal is reset to its
original disposition (the value it had upon entrance to the
shell). If arg is the null string the signal specified by each
sigspec is ignored by the shell and by the commands it invokes.
If arg is not present and -p has been supplied, then the trap
commands associated with each sigspec are displayed. If no
arguments are supplied or if only -p is given, trap prints the
list of commands associated with each signal. The -l option
causes the shell to print a list of signal names and their corresponding
numbers. Each sigspec is either a signal name
defined in <signal.h>, or a signal number. Signal names are
case insensitive and the SIG prefix is optional. If a sigspec
is EXIT (0) the command arg is executed on exit from the shell.
If a sigspec is DEBUG, the command arg is executed before every
simple command, for command, case command, select command, every
arithmetic for command, and before the first command executes in
a shell function (see SHELL GRAMMAR above). Refer to the
description of the extdebug option to the shopt builtin for
details of its effect on the DEBUG trap. If a sigspec is ERR,
the command arg is executed whenever a simple command has a
non-zero exit status, subject to the following conditions. The
ERR trap is not executed if the failed command is part of the
command list immediately following a while or until keyword,
part of the test in an if statement, part of a && or || list, or
if the command’s return value is being inverted via !. These
are the same conditions obeyed by the errexit option. If a
sigspec is RETURN, the command arg is executed each time a shell
function or a script executed with the . or source builtins finishes
executing. Signals ignored upon entry to the shell cannot
be trapped or reset. Trapped signals are reset to their original
values in a child process when it is created. The return
status is false if any sigspec is invalid; otherwise trap
returns true.
type [-aftpP] name [name ...]
With no options, indicate how each name would be interpreted if
used as a command name. If the -t option is used, type prints a
string which is one of alias, keyword, function, builtin, or
file if name is an alias, shell reserved word, function,
builtin, or disk file, respectively. If the name is not found,
then nothing is printed, and an exit status of false is
returned. If the -p option is used, type either returns the
name of the disk file that would be executed if name were specified
as a command name, or nothing if ‘’type -t name’’ would not
return file. The -P option forces a PATH search for each name,
even if ‘’type -t name’’ would not return file. If a command is
hashed, -p and -P print the hashed value, not necessarily the
file that appears first in PATH. If the -a option is used, type
prints all of the places that contain an executable named name.
This includes aliases and functions, if and only if the -p
option is not also used. The table of hashed commands is not
consulted when using -a. The -f option suppresses shell function
lookup, as with the command builtin. type returns true if
any of the arguments are found, false if none are found.
ulimit [-SHacdefilmnpqrstuvx [limit]]
Provides control over the resources available to the shell and
to processes started by it, on systems that allow such control.
The -H and -S options specify that the hard or soft limit is set
for the given resource. A hard limit cannot be increased once
it is set; a soft limit may be increased up to the value of the
hard limit. If neither -H nor -S is specified, both the soft
and hard limits are set. The value of limit can be a number in
the unit specified for the resource or one of the special values
hard, soft, or unlimited, which stand for the current hard
limit, the current soft limit, and no limit, respectively. If
limit is omitted, the current value of the soft limit of the
resource is printed, unless the -H option is given. When more
than one resource is specified, the limit name and unit are
printed before the value. Other options are interpreted as follows:
If limit is given, it is the new value of the specified resource (the -a option is display only). If no option is given, then -f is assumed. Values are in 1024-byte increments, except for -t, which is in seconds, -p, which is in units of 512-byte blocks, and -n and -u, which are unscaled values. The return status is 0 unless an invalid option or argument is supplied, or an error occurs while setting a new limit.
umask [-p] [-S] [mode]
The user file-creation mask is set to mode. If mode begins with
a digit, it is interpreted as an octal number; otherwise it is
interpreted as a symbolic mode mask similar to that accepted by
chmod(1)
. If mode is omitted, the current value of the mask is
printed. The -S option causes the mask to be printed in symbolic
form; the default output is an octal number. If the -p
option is supplied, and mode is omitted, the output is in a form
that may be reused as input. The return status is 0 if the mode
was successfully changed or if no mode argument was supplied,
and false otherwise.
unalias [-a] [name ...]
Remove each name from the list of defined aliases. If -a is
supplied, all alias definitions are removed. The return value
is true unless a supplied name is not a defined alias.
unset [-fv] [name ...]
For each name, remove the corresponding variable or function.
If no options are supplied, or the -v option is given, each name
refers to a shell variable. Read-only variables may not be
unset. If -f is specified, each name refers to a shell function,
and the function definition is removed. Each unset variable
or function is removed from the environment passed to subsequent
commands. If any of RANDOM, SECONDS, LINENO, HISTCMD,
FUNCNAME, GROUPS, or DIRSTACK are unset, they lose their special
properties, even if they are subsequently reset. The exit status
is true unless a name is readonly.
wait [n ...]
Wait for each specified process and return its termination status.
Each n may be a process ID or a job specification; if a
job spec is given, all processes in that job’s pipeline are
waited for. If n is not given, all currently active child processes
are waited for, and the return status is zero. If n
specifies a non-existent process or job, the return status is
127. Otherwise, the return status is the exit status of the
last process or job waited for.
If bash is started with the name rbash, or the -r option is supplied at invocation, the shell becomes restricted. A restricted shell is used to set up an environment more controlled than the standard shell. It behaves identically to bash with the exception that the following are disallowed or not performed:
These restrictions are enforced after any startup files are read.
When a command that is found to be a shell script is executed (see COMMAND EXECUTION above), rbash turns off any restrictions in the shell spawned to execute the script.
Bash Reference Manual, Brian Fox and Chet Ramey
The Gnu Readline Library, Brian Fox and Chet Ramey
The Gnu History Library, Brian Fox and Chet Ramey
Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) Part 2: Shell and Utili_ties,
IEEE
sh(1)
, ksh(1)
, csh(1)
emacs(1)
, vi(1)
readline(3)
/bin/bash
The bash executable
/etc/profile
The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.bash_profile
The personal initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.bashrc
The individual per-interactive-shell startup file
~/.bash_logout
The individual login shell cleanup file, executed when a login
shell exits
~/.inputrc
Individual readline initialization file
Brian Fox, Free Software Foundation
bfox@gnu.org
Chet Ramey, Case Western Reserve University chet@po.cwru.edu
If you find a bug in bash, you should report it. But first, you should make sure that it really is a bug, and that it appears in the latest version of bash. The latest version is always available from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/bash/.
Once you have determined that a bug actually exists, use the bashbug command to submit a bug report. If you have a fix, you are encouraged to mail that as well! Suggestions and ‘philosophical’ bug reports may be mailed to bug-bash@gnu.org or posted to the Usenet newsgroup gnu.bash.bug.
ALL bug reports should include:
The version number of bash
The hardware and operating system
The compiler used to compile
A description of the bug behaviour
A short script or ‘recipe’ which exercises the bug
bashbug inserts the first three items automatically into the template it provides for filing a bug report.
Comments and bug reports concerning this manual page should be directed to chet@po.cwru.edu.
It’s too big and too slow.
There are some subtle differences between bash and traditional versions of sh, mostly because of the POSIX specification.
Aliases are confusing in some uses.
Shell builtin commands and functions are not stoppable/restartable.
Compound commands and command sequences of the form ‘a ; b ; c’ are not handled gracefully when process suspension is attempted. When a process is stopped, the shell immediately executes the next command in the sequence. It suffices to place the sequence of commands between parentheses to force it into a subshell, which may be stopped as a unit.
Commands inside of $(...) command substitution are not parsed until substitution is attempted. This will delay error reporting until some time after the command is entered. For example, unmatched parentheses, even inside shell comments, will result in error messages while the construct is being read.
Array variables may not (yet) be exported.