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The Bash Shell

Bash is a text only command line shell. Bash interpretes commands read from the standard input or from a file. Bash is compatible with the Bourne shell and 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).

Documentation

More infomation is available at the command line by typing man bash or pinfo bash, and also at the Bash website.

Configuration files for bash

~/.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
The files .bash_login, .bashenv, and .bashaliases aren't used in bash version "2.05b".

Aliases for Common Commands

Shorten commonly typed commands by setting a command alias. For example, matlab can start without some features with the command matlab -nodesktop -nojvm -nosplash, but that about two dozen extra characters to type. An alias can be made for the matlab command with alias matlab="matlab -nodesktop -nojvm -nosplash". To verify the alias is set run which matlab.

To have the alias each time you log in, append the alias at the end of your ~/.bashrc file.

Institute of Technology
www.math.umn.edu/systems_guide/fedora_guide/bash_shell/
Last Modified September 15, 2006
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