A Mirror of John Jai's Basic Command Tutorial

The author does not guarantee the accuracy of any of the material contained herein. Nor will he accept blame for any mistakes, wrongdoings, injuries, grievances, disasters or other acts of nature caused by the misuse of the information presented. Any and all failures should be attributed to the weaknesses of the computer, not the system administrators.

UNIX is a trademark of some big company that can sue my pants off if they knew I was using it without their permission, and cared to destroy my life.

Created and maintained by John Jai .
Please send question, suggestions, and comments to jcjai(at)structure.stanford.edu.
This file last updated on November 7, 1996.

It's not as easy pointing-and-clicking, like on a Mac, or even as simple as the basic commands in DOS, but once you get used to it, you'll like UNIX. I promise. OK, well, I won't promise, but you should learn it anyway because one day, it will take over the world...

This page lists almost all of the UNIX commands that you will use, ranging from simple, everyday commands to some things that you will probably never need. I think you will find that there are some very basic commands that you already know. However, there may be some tricks that you don't know, for a command that you do.

I have also included short descriptions for some of the common UNIX utility programs. Some of these and some of the commands are unique to the SACL system or, at least, not standard for out-of-the-box UNIX systems. I have tried to note these when they occur. Many other common UNIX programs such as LaTeX, elm, pine, and so on, are not described in here. There will probably be a future page about those types of applications.

Each section is arranged by (my definition of) importance. The general idea is that you only have to read sections as far as you feel you need to, to reach the level of UNIX understanding you desire. I suggest that everybody read the first section and at least glance through the second section and then save the rest for reference. This file is pretty long, and contains much more than you will want at any given time, but you can always look for a specific command in the index at the end.

Some of the commands only work for SunOS and others only for Solaris. Usually, there will be two commands that do the same thing for the two different operating systems. I've tried to note these. Otherwise, all of the other commands should work for both SunOS and Solaris. But of course, there's bound to be some mistakes. In other words, don't build your thesis around the information in here!

Hopefully, with this document, you will be able to navigate around your UNIX account like the proud owner of a Ford Escort on the information superhighway.