What Is The Shell?

When we speak of the command line, we are really referring to the shell. The shell is a program
that takes keyboard commands and passes them to the operating system to carry out. Almost all
Linux distributions supply a shell program from the GNU Project called bash.

The name “bash” is an acronym for “Bourne Again SHell”, a reference to the fact bash is an
enhanced replacement for sh, the original Unix shell program written by Steve Bourne.

Command History

If we press the up-arrow key, we will see that the previous command reappears after the
prompt. This is called command history. Most Linux distributions remember the last 1000
commands by default. Press the down-arrow key and the previous command disappears.

Q.1 Check the output of the following commands:date, ls, who, cal, ps, wc, cat,
uname, pwd, mkdir, rmdir, cd, cp, rm, mv, diff, chmod, grep, sed, head, tail,cut,
paste, sort,find, man

Command list

Command Description
Date $date
Sat Dec 28 12:55:50 IST 2019

This command displays the current time and date.

date +%H Shows Hour e.g 11
date +%m Shows month number e.g. 12
date +%M Shows minute e.g. 23
date +%y Shows year (2 digit)e.g. 19
date +%Y Shows year (4 digit)e.g. 2019
date +%Z Shows time zone e.g IST
date +%T Shows current time in HH:MM:SS format 16:48:23
date +%D Shows current date in DD/MM/YY format 28/12/19
Who List of all the users currently logged in as a user
Who
who command without $ who
any arguments, it will user1 tty1 2019-12-16 19:27
root tty2 2019-12-16 19:26
display account
remote1 pts/1 2019-12-16 19:27 (192.168.56.1)
information (user login
name, user’s terminal,
time of login as well as
the host the user is
logged in from)
who -h
To print the heading of $ who –H
the columns displayed, NAME LINE TIME COMMENT
user1 tty1 2019-12-16 19:27
user2 pts/0 2019-12-16 19:26 (192.168.56.1)
root pts/1 2019-12-16 19:27 (192.168.56.1)

who –q
To print the login $ who –q
names and total number User1 remote1 root
of logged on users. # users=3

who –b
To view the time of last $ who –b
system boot. system boot 2019-12-16 02:39

who –a
It will print combined $ who -a
information as we
discussed above system boot 2019-12-16 02:39
run-level 3 2018-01-19 02:39
LOGIN tty1 2018-01-19 02:39 3258 id=1
LOGIN ttyS0 2018-01-19 02:39 3259 id=S0

ls command and its options

Option Long Option Description

-a -all List all files, even those with names that begin with a period,
which are normally not listed (i.e., hidden).
-A --almost -all Like the -a option above except it does not list . (current
directory) and .. (parent directory).
-d --directory Ordinarily, if a directory is specified, ls will list the contents of
the directory, not the directory itself. Use this option in
conjunction with the -l option to see details about the
directory rather than its contents.
-F --classify This option will append an indicator character to the end of
each listed name. For example, a “/” if the name is a
directory.
-h --human- In long format listings, display file sizes in human readable
readable format rather than in bytes.
-l Display results in long format.
-r --reverse Display the results in reverse order. Normally, ls displays its
results in ascending alphabetical order.
-S Sort results by file size.
 -t Sort by modification time.

[ directory list in long format and sorted on time ]

$ls –lt
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root UsersGrp 354 Dec 23 13:01 file1.sh
drwxr-xr-x 1 root UsersGrp 10 Dec 20 17:24 book
-rw-r--r-- 1 root UsersGrp 25 Dec 20 17:14 abc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root UsersGrp 20 Nov 28 12:59 demo1

As we saw before, the “-l” option causes ls to display its results in long format. This format
contains a great deal of useful information. Here is the Examples directory from an early
Ubuntu system:

Field Meaning
- The first character indicates the type of file. Among the different types, a
leading dash means a regular file, while a “d” indicates a directory.
rw-r--r-- Access rights to the file. The next three characters are the access rights for
the file's owner, the next three are for members of the file's group, and the
final three are for everyone else.
1 File's number of hard links. See the discussion of links later in this chapter.
Root The username of the file's owner.
UsersGrp The name of the group which owns the file.
354 Size of the file in bytes.
Dec 23 13:01 Date and time of the file's last modification.
file1.sh File name

Cal Cal command is used to display the calendar

$cal will display current month/year calendar
$cal 2022 will display calendar for the year 2022 [entire year]
$cal 2 2000 will display calendar for the month of Feb of year 2000

ps List processes currently running on current shell session

Ps –aux List all the processes by all users on the current system

ps -u user List all of the processes and commands user is running

ps [root@dotcom ~]# ps
Shows the processes for PID TTY TIME CMD
the current shell – 12330 pts/0 00:00:00 bash
21621 pts/0 00:00:00 ps
Where
PID – the unique process ID
TTY – terminal type that the user is logged into
 TIME – amount of CPU in minutes and seconds that the process has
been running
CMD – name of the command that launched the process.
ps –r view all running processes
[root@dotcom ~]# ps –r
ps –x view all processes owned by you
[root@dotcom ~]# ps –x
ps –f view full format listing
[root@dotcom ~]#ps -af
tux 17327 17326 0 12:42 pts/0 00:00:00 -bash
tux 17918 17327 0 12:50 pts/0 00:00:00 ps -af

wc wc stands for word count. As the name implies, it is mainly used for
counting purpose.
It is used to find out number of lines, word count, byte and
characters count in the files specified in the file arguments.
By default it displays four-columnar output.
First column shows number of lines present in a file specified,
second column shows number of words present in the file, third
column shows number of characters present in file and fourth
column itself is the file name which are given as argument

wc –l -l: This option prints the number of lines present in a file.

With one file name
$ wc -l state.txt
5 state.txt
With more than one file name
$ wc -l state.txt capital.txt
5 state.txt
5 capital.txt
10 total
-w This option prints the number of words present in a file
-c This option displays count of bytes present in a file.
cat To view single file $cat filename1
To view multiple files $cat file1, file2, file3
To create a file $cat > filename
Type some text ad Pres ctrl +d to save and exit
Uname Print system information
uname –a Print all information like hostname, machine type, os
release, version etc.
Pwd To display the current working directory, we use the pwd (print
working directory) command.
mkdir Create Directories
mkdir dir1 would create a single directory named “dir1”, while
mkdir dir1 dir2 dir3 would create three directories named
“dir1”, “dir2”, and “dir3”.
rmdir dir-name Will remove the directory dir-name, if it's empty. This command
can only remove empty directories.
rmdir dir-name Will remove the directory dir-name, if it's empty. This command
can only remove
empty directories
Cd cd .. Go to the parent directory of current directory (mind the
space between cd and ..)
cd . Current directory
cd / Take you to root directory of the system
cd Take you to HOME DIRECTORY
cp Copy Files And Directories

cp file1 file2 Copy file1 to file2. If file2 exists, it is

overwritten with the contents of file1. If
file2 does not exist, it is created.
cp -i file1 file2 Same as above, except that if file2 exists,
the user is prompted before it is
overwritten.
cp file1 file2 dir1 Copy file1 and file2 into directory dir1. dir1
must already exist.
cp dir1/* dir2 Using a wildcard, all the files in dir1 are
copied into dir2. dir2 must already exist.
rm Remove Files And Directories rm file1 Delete file1 silently.
rm -i file1 Same as above, except that the user is prompted for
confirmation before the deletion is performed.
rm -r file1 dir1 Delete file1 and dir1 and its contents.
rm -rf file1 dir1 Same as above, except that if either file1 or dir1 do
not exist, rm will continue silently
Be Careful With rm!
Unix-like operating systems such as Linux do not have an
undelete command. Once you delete something with rm, it's
gone. Linux assumes you're smart and you know what you're
doing.
IF YOU ARE A NEW USER TO LINUX COMMAND LINE, YOU
SHOULD ALWAYS USE
rm -i.
You can specify multiple files
rm -i filename Asks you before every file removal for confirmation.
rm -R dir-name Will remove the directory dir-name recursively.
rm -rf dir-name Will remove the directory dir recursively, ignoring non-existent
files and will never prompt for anything. BE CAREFUL USING
 THIS COMMAND!
Mv Move And Rename Files
The mv command performs both file moving and file renaming.
mv file1 file2 Move file1 to file2. If file2 exists, it is overwritten
with the contents of file1. If file2
does not exist, it is created. In either case, file1
ceases to exist.
mv -i file1 file2 Same as above, except that if file2 exists, the user
is prompted before it is
overwritten.
mv file1 file2 dir1 Move file1 and file2 into directory dir1. dir1
must already exist.
mv dir1 dir2 If directory dir2 does not exist, create directory
dir2 and move the contents of directory dir1 into
dir2 and delete directory dir1. If directory dir2
does exist, move directory dir1 (and its contents)
into directory dir2.
Chmod Changing permissions - read,write,execute of a file or directory

Echo echo command in linux is used to display line of text/string that

are passed as an argument.
-e here enables the interpretation of backslash escapes
-n : this option is used to omit echoing trailing newline

$echo "welcome \nto\n linux"

welcome \nto\n linux

$echo -e "welcome \nto\n linux"

welcome
to
linux

$ echo "hi";echo "welcome"

hi
welcome

$ echo -n "hi";echo -n "welcome"

hiwelcome
Bc bc command is used for command line calculator
The bc command supports the following features:
 Arithmetic operators
  Increment or Decrement operators
 Assignment operators
 Comparison or Relational operators
 Logical or Boolean operators
 Math functions
 Conditional statements
 Iterative statements
Input : $ echo "12+5" | bc
Output : 17
Input : $ echo "10^2" | bc
Output : 100

Exit We can end a terminal session by either closing the terminal

emulator window, or by entering the exit command at the shell
prompt
touch filename Create a file filename, if it doesn't exist, otherwise change the
timestamp of the file to current time.
touch filename Create a file filename, if it doesn't exist, otherwise change the
timestamp of the
file to current time
man ls Read the manual page of ls command
Help In Bash shell, this will display the list of all available bash
commands.
whatis date List a one-line description of date command
hostname Display hostname of the system

passwd Change password of current user

whoami Username of the users logged in at the terminal
top List all processes sorted by their current system resource usage.
Displays a continually updated
display of processes (By default 3 seconds). Use q key to exit top

find /var/www -name This will print out the full path/filename to all files under
'*.css' /var/www that end in .css.
grep font This will print all lines containing the pattern font in the specified
/var/www/html/style.css file.
grep -R font /var/www/html/
grep –R will recursively access the directory

gzip gzip command compresses files. Each single file is compressed into
a single file
f given a file as an argument, gzip compresses the file, adds a “.gz”
suffix, and deletes the original file
$ gzip -v mydoc.txt
OUTPUT :
 new.txt: 18.2% -- replaced with new.txt.gz
Gunzip gunzip command is used to compress or expand a file or a list of
files in Linux. It accepts all the files having extension as .gz, .z, _z, -
gz, -z , .Z, .taz or.tgz and replace the compressed file with the
original file by default. The files after uncompression retain its
actual extension.
Input:
$gunzip filename.txt.gz
Output:
filename.txt
Tar The Linux ‘tar’ stands for tape archive, is used to create Archive and
extract the Archive files. tar command in Linux is one of the
important command which provides archiving functionality in
Linux. We can use Linux tar command to create compressed or
uncompressed Archive files and also maintain and modify them.
Options:
-c : Creates Archive
-x : Extract the archive
-f : creates archive with given filename
-t : displays or lists files in archived file
-u : archives and adds to an existing archive file
-v : Displays Verbose Information
-A : Concatenates the archive files
-z : zip, tells tar command that create tar file using gzip
-j : filter archive tar file using tbzip
-W : Verify a archive file
-r : update or add file or directory in already existed .tar file
1. Creating an uncompressed tar Archive using option -cvf : This
command creates a tar file called file.tar which is the Archive of all
.c files in current directory.
$ tar cvf file.tar *.c
Output :
os2.c
os3.c
os4.c
2. Extracting files from Archive using option -xvf : This command
extracts files from Archives.
$ tar xvf file.tar
Output :
os2.c
os3.c
os4.c
3. gzip compression on the tar Archive, using option -z : This
command creates a tar file called file.tar.gz which is the Archive of
.c files.
 $ tar cvzf file.tar.gz *.c
4. Extracting a gzip tar Archive *.tar.gz using option -xvzf : This
command extracts files from tar archived file.tar.gz files.
$ tar xvzf file.tar.gz

Finger The finger displays information about the system users.

$finger dotcom
Output :
Login: dotcom Name: dotcom
Directory: /home/dotcom Shell: /bin/bash
On since Sat Dec 28 10:16 (IST) on :0 from :0 (messages off)
No mail.
No Plan.
Mesg Control write access to you terminal
$mesg y : will enable your terminal to receive the message
$mesg n : will Prevents the display of terminal messages from other
users.
$mesg : will display current status [y / n]
Mail The mail command invokes the standard sendmail binary
(/usr/sbin/sendmail) which in turns connects to the local MTA to
send the mail to its destination. The local MTA is a locally running
smtp server that accepts mails on port 25.
$ mail -s "Hello World" someone@example.com
Cc:
Hi Peter
How are you
I am fine
Good Bye
<Ctrl+D>
OR

$ mail -s "This is the subject" somebody@example.com <<< ‘This is

the message’

Talk The "talk" command allows you to talk to other users on the same
system
Write write command in Linux is used to send a message to another user.
Wall wall command in Linux system is used to write a message to all
users
ln – Create Links
The ln command is used to create either hard or symbolic links. It is
used in one of two ways:
ln file link to create a hard link, and:
ln -s item link to create a symbolic link where “item” is
either a file or a directory.
 Hard Links
Hard links are the original Unix way of creating links, compared to
symbolic links, which are more modern. By default, every
file has a single hard link that gives the file its name. When
we create a hard link, we create an additional directory
entry for a file. Hard links have two important limitations:
1. A hard link cannot reference a file outside its own file system.
This means a link cannot reference a file that is not on the
same disk partition as the link itself.
2. A hard link may not reference a directory.

Symbolic Links
Symbolic links were created to overcome the limitations of hard
links. Symbolic links work by creating a special type of file
that contains a text pointer to the referenced file or
directory. In this regard, they operate in much the same
way as a Windows shortcut though of course, they predate
the Windows feature by many years ;-)

A file pointed to by a symbolic link, and the symbolic link itself are
largely indistinguishable from one another. For example, if
you write something to the symbolic link, the referenced
file is written to. However when you delete a symbolic link,
only the link is deleted, not the file itself. If the file is
deleted before the symbolic link, the link will continue to
exist, but will point to nothing. In this case, the link is said
to be broken. In many implementations, the ls command
will display broken links in a distinguishing color, such as
red, to reveal their presence.

Symbolic links were created to overcome the two disadvantages of

hard links: Hard links cannot span physical devices and
hard links cannot reference directories, only files. Symbolic
links are a special type of file that contains a text pointer to
the target file or directory.

Filters Pipelines are often used to perform complex operations on data. It is possible to put
several commands together into a pipeline. Frequently, the commands used this way are referred
to as filters.

● cat - Concatenate files

● sort - Sort lines of text
● uniq - Report or omit repeated lines
● grep - Print lines matching a pattern
● wc - Print newline, word, and byte counts for each file
● head - Output the first part of a file [ by default first 10 lines of a file ]
head -15 filename will display first 15 lines of a file
● tail - Output the last part of a file [ by default last 10 lines of a file ]
head -15 filename will display last 15 lines of a file
● tee - Read from standard input and write to standard output and files

Important Facts About Filenames

1. Filenames that begin with a period character are hidden. This only means that ls will not list
them unless you say ls -a. When your account was created, several hidden files were placed
in your home directory to configure things for your account. Later on we will take a closer
look at some of these files to see how you can customize your environment. In addition, some
applications place their configuration and settings files in your home directory as hidden
files.

2. Filenames and commands in Linux, like Unix, are case sensitive. The filenames “File1” and
“file1” refer to different files.

3. Linux has no concept of a “file extension” like some other operating systems. You may name
files any way you like. The contents and/or purpose of a file is determined by other means.
Although Unix-like operating systems don’t use file extensions to determine the
contents/purpose of files, many application programs do.

4. Though Linux supports long filenames which may contain embedded spaces and
punctuation characters, limit the punctuation characters in the names of files you create to
period, dash, and underscore. Most importantly, do not embed spaces in filenames. If you
want to represent spaces between words in a filename, use underscore characters. You will
thank yourself later.

Absolute Pathnames: An absolute pathname begins with the root directory and follows the tree
branch by branch until the path to the desired directory or file is completed.

Relative Pathnames: Where an absolute pathname starts from the root directory and leads to its
destination, a relative pathname starts from the working directory. To do this, it uses a couple of
special notations to represent relative positions in the file system tree. These special notations are
"." (dot) and ".." (dot dot).

The "." notation refers to the working directory and the ".." notation refers to the working
directory's parent directory.

Pipelines
The ability of commands to read data from standard input and send to standard output is
utilized by a shell feature called pipelines. Using the pipe operator “|” (vertical bar), the
standard output of one command can be piped into the standard input of another:

command1 | command2
$ ls -l /usr/bin | less

Linux file system: linux file system name is ext2 [ eXtended file system ], the directory structure
is inverted tree. Where root is at the top
Basic explanation of structure hierarchy:

etc dev home usr var

jono mako cory lib

work photos

Directory Comments
/root This is the home directory for the root account.
/proc The /proc directory is special. It's not a real file system in the sense of
files stored on your hard drive. Rather, it is a virtual file system
maintained by the Linux kernel. The “files” it contains are peepholes
into the kernel itself. The files are readable and will give you a picture of
how the kernel sees your computer.
/dev Linux exposes devices as files, and the /dev directory contains a
number of special files that represent devices. These are not actual files
as we know them, but they appear as files – for example, /dev/sda
represents the first SATA drive in the system
/tmp The /tmp directory is intended for storage of temporary, transient files
created by various programs. Some configurations cause this directory
to be emptied each time the system is rebooted.
/etc ETC is a folder which contain all your system configuration files in it.
Then why the etc name? “etc” is an English word which means etcetera
i.e in layman words it is “and so on”
/bin The /bin directory contains the essential user binaries (programs) that
must be present when the system is mounted
/sbin This directory contains “system” binaries. These are programs that
 perform vital system tasks that are generally reserved for the superuser.
/usr OR /home The /usr directory tree is likely the largest one on a Linux system. It
contains all the programs and support files used by regular users.
/usr/bin /usr/bin contains the executable programs installed by your Linux
distribution. It is not uncommon for this directory to hold thousands of
programs.
/usr/lib The shared libraries for the programs in /usr/bin.
/usr/local The /usr/local tree is where programs that are not included with your
distribution but are intended for systemwide use are installed. Programs
compiled from source code are normally installed in /usr/local/bin. On
a newly installed Linux system, this tree exists, but it will be empty until
the system administrator puts something in it.
/usr/sbin Contains more system administration programs.
/usr/share /usr/share contains all the shared data used by programs in /usr/bin.
This includes things like default configuration files, icons, screen
backgrounds, sound files, etc.
/usr/share/doc Most packages installed on the system will include some kind of
documentation. In /usr/share/doc, we will find documentation files
organized by package. 22 A Guided Tour Directory Comments
/var With the exception of /tmp and /home, the directories we have looked
at so far remain relatively static, that is, their contents don't change. The
/var directory tree is where data that is likely to change is stored.
Various databases, spool files, user mail, etc. are located here.
/var/log /var/log contains log files, records of various system activity. These are
very important and should be monitored from time to time. The most
useful ones are /var/log/messages and/or /var/log/syslog. Note that
for security reasons on some systems, you must be the superuser to view
log files

Q-1 As above on first page...

Q-2 Write a script to find the complete path for any file.
find .. -name "filename"
3 Write a shell script to execute following commands
1. Sort file abc.txt and save this sorted file in xyz.txt
2. Give an example of : To execute commands together without affecting result of
each other.
3. How to print “this is a three –line
1. Text message”
4. Which command display version of the UNIX?
5. How would u get online help of cat command?

Ans. echo “sorting the file”

sort abc.txt > xyz.txt
echo “executing two commands”
who ; ls
echo –e “this is \n a three-line \n Text message”
echo “The version is `uname -a`”
echo “Help of cat command”
man cat

4 Write a shell script to execute following commands

1. How would u display the hidden files?
2. How delete directory with files?
3. How would user can do interactive copying?
4. How would user can do interactive deletion of files?
5. Explain two functionality of “mv” command with example?

Ans. echo “1. How would u display the hidden files”

echo “2. How delete directory with files”
echo “3. How would user can do interactive copying”
echo “4. How would user can do interactive deletion of files”
echo “5. Explain two functionality of “mv” command with example”
echo “enter your choice”
read ch
case $ch in
1) echo “Displaying hidden files”
ls .[a-z]* ;;
2) echo “Deleting directories with files”
rm -R dirname
3) echo “Interactive copy”
cp -i file1 file2 ;; # file2 should be created first to check interactivity
4) echo “Interactive Deletion”
rm -i file1 ;;
5) echo “mv command”
mv oldfilename newfilename ;;
*) echo “Invalid choice” ;;

esac
5 Write a shell script to execute following commands
1. Create a file called text and store name,age and address in it.
2. Display the contents of the file text on the screen.
3. Delete the directories mydir and newdir at one shot.
4. Sort a numeric file?
5. Change the permissions for the file newtext to 666.

Ans. echo “1. Create a file called text and store name,age and address in it.”
echo “2. Display the contents of the file text on the screen.”
echo “3. Delete the directories mydir and newdir at one shot.”
echo “4. Sort a numeric file”
echo “5. Change the permissions for the file newtext to 666.”
echo “enter your choice”
read ch
case $ch in
1) echo “Create a file called text and store name,age and address in it.”
echo “Enter the filename”
read fn
cat > $fn ;;
2) echo “Display the contents of the file text on the screen.”
cat $fn ;;
3) echo “Delete the directories mydir and newdir at one shot.”
rmdir mydir newdir ;;
4) echo “Sort a numeric file”
sort -n filename ;;
5) echo “Change the permissions for the file newtext to 666.”
chmod 666 newtext ;;
*) echo “Invalid choice” ;;
esac

6 Write shell script that accept filename and displays last modification time if file exists,
otherwise display appropriate message.

Ans. if [ -e $fn ]
then
ls -l $fn | cut -d “ “ -f8 #change the column number for desired output
else
echo “File does not exist”
fi

7 Write a shell script to display the login names that begin with ‘s’.

Ans. who | grep ^s

8 Write a shell script to remove the zero sized file from the current directory
Ans. for i in *
do
if [ ! -s $i ]
then

rm $i
echo " $i removed "
fi
done

OR

$find . -size 0 –delete

9 Write a shell script to display the name of all the executable file from the current
directory.

Ans. for i in *
do
if [ -x $i ]
then
countx=`expr $countx + 1`
echo $i
fi
echo “Number of executable files are $countx”

10 Write a shell script that will display welcome message according to time

Ans. d=`date +"%H"`

if [ $d -lt 12 ]
then
echo “Good Morning”
elif [ $d -gt 12 -a $d -lt 14 ]
then
echo “Good Afternoon”
else
echo “Good Evening”
fi

11 Write a shell script to find number of ordinary files and directory files.
Ans.
for i in *
do
if [ -d $i ]
then
countd=`expr $countd + 1`
 fi
if [ -f $i ]
then
countf=`expr $countf + 1`
fi
done
echo “Number of directories are $countd ”
echo “Number of Ordinary files are $countf”

12 Write a shell script that takes a filename from the command line and checks whether
the file is an ordinary file or not.
• If it is an ordinary file then it should display the contents of the file.
• If it is not an ordinary file then script should display the message:
“ File does not exist or is not ordinary, cannot display. “
Ans.
if [ -f $1 ]
then
echo “It is an ordinary file”
cat $1
else
echo “File does not exist or is not ordinary file”
fi

13 Write a shell script that takes a filename from the user and checks whether it is a
directory file or not.
• If it is a directory, then the script should display the contents of
the directory.
• If it is not a directory file then script should display the message:
“File is not a directory file”
Ans.
echo “enter the filename”
read fn

if [ -d $fn ]
then
echo “Its a directory”
ls $fn
else
echo “Its not a directory”
fi

14 Write a shell script that takes a filename as an argument and checks if the file
exists and is executable.
• If the file is executable then the shell script should display the message: “File
exists”
 • If the file does not exists and is not executable then the script should display the
message: “File does not exist or is not executable.”
Ans.
echo “enter the filename”
read fn

if [ -e $fn -a -x $fn ]
then
echo “file exists and is executable”
else
echo “file does not exist or is not executable”
fi

15 Write a shell script that displays all subdirectories in current working directory.
Ans.
echo “List of Directories. ”
for i in *
do
if [ -d $i ]
then
echo $i
fi

OR

find . –type d –print

16 Write a shell script that calculates the number of ordinary and directory files in your
current working directory.
Ans.
for i in *
do
if [ -d $i ]
then
countd=`expr $countd + 1`
fi
if [ -f $i ]
then
countf=`expr $countf + 1`
fi
done
echo “Number of directories are $countd ”
echo “Number of Ordinary files are $countf”

17 Write a shell script that accepts 2 filenames and checks if both exists; if both exist then
append the content of the second file into the first file.
Ans.
echo “enter the first filename”
read fn1
echo “enter the second filename”
read fn2
if [ -f $fn1 -a -f $fn2 ]
then
echo “Both file exists”
cat $fn2 >> $fn1
else
echo “Files does not exist”
fi

18 Write a shell script that takes the name of two files as arguments and performs the
following:
i. Displays the message :

“Displaying the contents of file :( first argument)”and displays the contents page
wise.

ii. Copies the contents of the first argument to second argument.

iii. Finally displays the message :

“File copied successfully.”

Ans.
echo “Displaying the contents of file $1”
cat $1
echo “Displaying the contents page wise”
cat $1 | more
echo “Copying the files”
cp $1 $2
c=`echo $?`
if [ $c -eq 0 ]
then
echo “File copied successfully”
else
echo “Files not copied successfully”
fi

19 Write a shell script to display the following menu and acts accordingly:

i. Calendar of the current month and year.

ii. Display “Good Morning/Good Afternoon/Good Evening” according to the current
login time.
iii. User name, Users home directory.
 iv. Terminal name, Terminal type.

v. Machine name.

vi. No. of users who are currently logged in; List of users who are currently logged in.
Ans.
echo “Menu”
echo “1. Calendar of the current month and year.”
echo “2. Display “Good Morning/Good Afternoon/Good Evening” according to the
current login time.”
echo “3. User name, Users home directory.”
echo “4. Terminal name, Terminal type.”
echo “5 Machine name.”
echo “6. No. of users who are currently logged in; List of users who are currently
logged in.”
echo “enter your choice”
read ch
case $ch in
1) echo “Calendar of current month is”
cal ;;
2) d=`date +"%H"`
if [ $d -lt 12 ]
then
echo “Good Morning”
elif [ $d -gt 12 -a $d -lt 16 ]
then
echo “Good Afternoon”
else
echo “Good Evening”
fi
3) echo “Username is $USER”
echo “Users Home directory is $HOME” ;;
4) echo “Terminal details”
tty;;
5) echo “Machine name is”
uname -m ;;
6) echo “The number of users logged in are”
who | wc -l
*) echo “Invalid choice”
esac

20 Write a shell script that displays the following menu and acts accordingly
1. Concatenates two strings
2. Renames a file
3. Deletes a file.
4. Copy the file to specific location
Ans.
echo “1. Concatenates two strings ”
echo “2. Renames a file”
echo “3. Deletes a file.”
echo “4. Copy the file to specific location”
echo “enter your choice”
read ch
case $ch in
1) echo “enter first string”
read str1
echo “enter second string”
read str2
echo “The concated strings are $str1$str2” ;;
2) echo “enter the old filename”
read ofn
echo “enter the new filename”
read nfn
mv $ofn $nfn
echo “file renamed” ;;
3) echo “enter the filename”
read fn
rm $fn
echo “file deleted” ;;
4) echo “enter the filename”
read fn
cp $fn \usr\home\dir\$fn #you can change the specific ```
echo “file copied” ;;
*) echo “invalid choice” ;;
esac

21 Write a shell script to change the suffix of all your *.txt files to .dat.
Ans.
for file in *.txt
do
mv $file `echo $file | sed 's/ \( .*\. \) txt/\1dat/'` ;
done

OR

for file in $1/*.dat ; do mv "$file" "${file%.*}.txt" ; done

22 Write a shell script to accept a directory-name and display its contents. If input is not
given then HOME directory's contents should be listed. (Make use of command line
argument)
Ans.
 if [ $# ]
then
ls $1
else
ls $HOME
fi

To execute do as below

$sh filename.sh dir1

23 Write a shell script to get all files of home directory and rename them if their names
start with c. e.g Newname = oldname111
Ans.
Suffix=”111”
shift
for f in "$@"
do
extension=${f##*.}
if [ -z $extension ]; then
mv "$f" "$f$suffix"
else
mv "$f" "${f%.$extension}$suffix.$extension"
fi
done

24 Write a shell script that takes two filename as arguments. It should check whether the
contents of two files are same or not, if they are same then second file should be
deleted.
Ans.
echo “enter the first filename”
read fn1
echo “enter the second filename”
read fn2
cmp $fn1 $fn2
c=`echo $?`
if [ $c -eq 0 ]
then
echo “both files are same”
rm $fn2
else
echo “both files are not same”
fi

$sh fn.sh dir1 dir2

25 Write a shell script that accepts two directory names from the command line and
copies all the files of one directory to another.
The script should do the following
• If the source directory does not exist, flash an error message
• If destination directory does not exist create it
• Once both exist copy all the files from source directory to destination directory.
Ans.
if [ $# ]
then
if [ -d $1 ]
then
if [ -d $2 ]
then
cp -R $1 $2
else
mkdir $2
echo "Directory created $2"
cp -R $1 $2
fi
else
echo “source directory does not exist”
fi
else
echo "Please provide command line arguments"
fi

26 Write a shell script that displays the following menu

• List home directory
• Date
• Print working directory
• Users logged in
Read the proper choice. Execute corresponding command. Check for invalid choice.
Ans.
echo “1.List home directory”
echo “2.Date”
echo “3. Print working directory”
echo “4. Users logged in”
echo “enter your choice”
read ch
case $ch in
1) echo “Home directory is $HOME” ;;
2) echo “Todays date is `date` ” ;;
3) echo “Present working directory is `pwd` ” ;;
4) echo “ No of users logged in are”
who ;;
 *) echo “Invalid choice” ;;
esac

27 Write a shell script that displays all hidden files in current directory.

Ans. $ ls -a | egrep '^\.'

OR

ls .[a-z]*

28 Write a shell script that Combine two files in the third file horizontally and vertically.
Ans.
echo “enter the first filename”
read fn1
echo “enter the second filename”
read fn2

echo “Combining two files horizontally”

cat $fn2 >> $fn1

echo “Combining two files vertically”

paste $fn1 $fn2

29 Write a shell script to delete all the spaces from a given file.
Ans.
echo “enter the filename”
read datafile
cat $datafile | tr -d '[:space:]' > newfile
30 Write a shell script to find a given date fall on a weekday or a weekend.
Ans.
d=`date +%u`
if [ $d –eq 7 ]
then
echo “it is weekend”
else
echo “it is a weekday”
fi

31 Write a shell script to search for a given word in all the files given as the arguments on
the command line.
Ans.
echo "Enter the word"
read w
for i in $@
do
grep $w $i
done

32 Write a shell script that display last modified file in the current directory.

Ans. ls -lt | head -2 | tail -1

33 Write a script to display the permissions of the particular file.

Ans.
echo “enter the filename”
read fn

if [ -r $fn ]
then
echo “Read permission”
fi
if [ -x $fn ]
then
echo “eXecute permission”
fi
if [ -w $fn ]
then
echo “Write permission”
fi

OR

ls -l $fn | cut -c 2-10

34 Write a shell script to display the calendar in the following manner:
i. Display the calendar of months m1 and m2 by ‘CAL m1, m2’ command file.
ii. Display the calendar of the months from m1 to m2 by ‘CAL m1-m2’ command file.
Ans.
m1=$1
y1=$2
wat=$3
m2=$4
y2=$5
if test $wat = ","
then
cal $m1 $y1;cal $m2 $y2

elif test $wat = "-"

then
while [ $y1 -le $y2 ]
do

cal $m1 $y1

read a
if [ $y1 -eq $y2 -a $m1 -ge $m2 ]
then
exit
fi
m1=`expr $m1 + 1`
if [ $m1 -gt 12 ]
then
m1=1
y1=`expr $y1 + 1`
fi
done
else
echo Syntax Mth1 Yr1 [,/-] Mth2 Yr2
fi

# run the shell script as

sh -x calrange.sh 1 2019 , 11 2019
sh -x calrange.sh 1 2019 - 11 2019
sh -x calrange.sh 1 2019 # 11 2019

35 Write a shell script to display the following menu for a particular file :
i. Display all the words of a file in ascending order.
ii. Display a file in descending order.
iii. Toggle all the characters in the file.
iv. Display type of the file.
Ans. echo “1. Display all the words of a file in ascending order.”
echo “2. Display a file in descending order.”
echo “3. Toggle all the characters in the file.”
echo “4. Display type of the file.”
echo “enter your choice”
read ch
echo “enter the filename”
read fn
case $ch in
1) sort $fn;;
2) sort -r $fn;;
3) cat $fn | tr “[a-z][A-Z]” “[A-Z][a-z]”
4) file $fn;;
*) echo “invalid choice”
esac

36 Write a shell script to check whether the named user is currently logged in or not.

Ans. echo “enter the username”

read un
c=`who | grep -c $un`
if [ $c -gt 0 ]
then
echo “User is currently logged in ”
else
echo “User is not currently logged in”
fi

37 Write a shell script to display the following menu for a particular file:
i. Display all the words of a file in ascending order.
ii. Display a file in descending order.
iii. Display a file in reerse order.
iv. Toggle all the characters in the file
v. Display type of the file.

Ans. echo “1.Display all the words of a file in ascending order.”

echo “2.Display a file in descending order.”
echo “3.Display a file in reerse order.”
echo “4.Toggle all the characters in the file”
echo “5.Display type of the file.”
echo “Enter your choice”
read ch
echo “enter the file name”
read fn
case $ch in
1) sort $fn ;;
 2) sort -r $fn ;;
3) rev $fn
4) cat $fn | tr “[a-z][A-Z]” “[A-Z][a-z]”
5) file $fn
*) echo “Invalid choice”
esac

38 Write a shell script to find total no. Of users and finds out how many of them are
currently logged in.

Ans. echo “The number of users in the system are”

cat etc/passwd | wc -l
echo “The number of uses currently logged in are “
who | wc –l
or

total=`cat /etc/passwd | wc -l`

cur_log=`who | wc -l`
echo "Total users : $total"
echo "Currently logged : $cur_log"

39 Write a shell script that displays the directory information in the following format-
Filename Size Date Protection Owner

Ans. x=`ls -l | wc -l`

i=2

echo "Filename\t\t\tSize\tDate\tProtection\tOwner\n"

while [ $i -le $x ]

do

s=`ls -1 | head -$i | tail -l | tr -s " "`

fn=`echo $s | cut -d " " -f 9`

si=`echo $s | cut -d " " -f 5`

d1=`echo $s | cut -d " " -f 6`

d2=`echo $s | cut -d " " -f 7`

p=`echo $s | cut -d " " -f 1`

 o=`echo $s | cut -d " " -f 3`

echo "$fn\t\t\t$si\t$d1 $d2\t$p\t$o"

i=`expr $i + 1`

done

OR
echo “Enter the filename”
read fn

echo “ Filename Size Date Protection Owner”

echo “`ls -l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f3` ` ls -l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f5` `ls -l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f6,7` `ls -l
$fn | cut -d ' ' -f1` `ls -l $fn | cut -d ' ' -f4` “

40 Write a shell script to display five largest files from the current directory

Ans. ls -lS | head -6 | tail -1

41 Write a shell script that toggles contents of the file

Ans. echo “Enter the filename”

read fn
cat $fn | tr “[a-z][A-Z]” “[A-Z][a-z]”

42 Write a shell script that report whether your friend has currently logged in or not.

Ans. echo “Enter the username”

read un

c=`who | grep -c $un`

if [ $c -gt 0 ]
then
echo “User is currently logged in ”
else
echo “User is not currently logged in”
fi

44 Write a shell script to accept any character using command line and list all the files
starting with that character in the current directory

Ans. ls | grep ^$1

 # run the shell script as: sh filename.sh a
# it will list files starting with a

45 Create a file called student containing roll-no, name and marks.

a. Display the contents of the file sorted by marks in descending order
b. Display the names of students in alphabetical order ignoring the case.
c. Display students according to their roll nos.
d. Sort file according to the second field and save it to file ‘names’.
e. Display the list of students who scored between 70 and 80.

Ans. echo “enter the filename”

read fn
cat > $fn

# enter roll-no | name | marks of students and press ctlr+d

echo “1. Display the contents of the file sorted by marks in descending order”
echo “2. Display the names of students in alphabetical order ignoring the case.”
echo “3. Display students according to their roll nos.”
echo “4. Sort file according to the second field and save it to file ‘names’.”
echo “5. Display the list of students who scored between 70 and 80”

echo “enter your choice”

read ch

case $ch in
1) sort -k5 -r $fn ;;
2) sort -k3 -i $fn ;;
3) sort $fn ;;
4) sort -k3 $fn > names ;;
5) awk ‘{ if( $5 > 70 && $5 < 80 ) print $5 }’ $fn ;;
*) echo “Invalid Choice”
esac
File Management Commands
Linux uses some conventions for present and parent directories. This can be a little confusing for
beginners. Whenever you are in a terminal in Linux, you will be in what is called the current
working directory. Often your command prompt will display either the full working directory, or
just the last part of that directory. Your prompt could look like one of the following:

user@dotcom ~/somedir $
user@ dotcom somedir $
user@ dotcom /home/user/somedir $
which says that your current working directory is /home/user/somedir.

In Linux .. represents the parent directory and . represents the current directory.
Therefore, if the current directory is /home/user/somedir, then cd ../somedir will not change
the working directory.

The table below lists some of the most used file management commands

File/directory permissions and groups

Command Utility

GoalKicker.com – Linux® Notes for Professionals 5

chmod <specification> filename Change the file permissions. Specifications = u user, g group, o
other, + add permission, - remove, r read, w write,x execute.

chmod -R <specification> dirname

Change the permissions of a directory recursively. To change permission of a directory and

everything within that directory, use this command.

chmod go=+r myfile Add read permission for the owner and the group.

chmod a +rwx myfile Allow all users to read, write or execute myfile.

chmod go -r myfile Remove read permission from the group and others.

chown owner1 filename Change ownership of a file to user owner1.

chgrp grp_owner filename Change primary group ownership of file filename to group
grp_owner.

chgrp -R grp_owner dir-name

Change primary group ownership of directory dir-name to group grp_owner recursively. To

change group ownership of a directory and everything within that directory, use this command.
Section 1.3: Hello World

Type the following code into your terminal, then press Enter :

echo "Hello World"

This will produce the following output:

Hello World

Section 1.4: Basic Linux Utilities

Linux has a command for almost any tasks and most of them are intuitive and easily interpreted.

Getting Help in Linux

Command Usability

man <name> Read the manual page of <name>.

man <section> <name> Read the manual page of <name>, related to the given section.

man -k <editor> Output all the software whose man pages contain <editor> keyword.

man -K <keyword> Outputs all man pages containing <keyword> within them.

apropos <editor> Output all the applications whose one line description matches the word ditor.

When not able to recall the name of the application, use this command.

help In Bash shell, this will display the list of all available bash commands.

help <name> In Bash shell, this will display the info about the <name> bash command.

info <name> View all the information about <name>.

dpkg -l Output a list of all installed packages on a Debian-based system.

dpkg -L packageName Will list out the files installed and path details for a given package on
Debian.

dpkg -l | grep -i <edit> Return all .deb installed packages with <edit> irrespective of cases.

less /var/lib/dpkg/available Return descriptions of all available packages.

whatis vim List a one-line description of vim.

<command-name> --help Display usage information about the <tool-name>. Sometimes
command -h also works, but not for all commands.

User identification and who is who in Linux world Command Usability hostname Display
hostname of the system.

GoalKicker.com – Linux® Notes for Professionals 6

hostname -f Displays Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the system.

passwd Change password of current user.

whoami Username of the users logged in at the terminal.

who List of all the users currently logged in as a user.

w Display current system status, time, duration, list of users currently logged in on system and
other user information.

last Who recently used the system.

last root When was the last time root logged in as user.

lastb Shows all bad login attempts into the system.

chmod Changing permissions - read,write,execute of a file or directory.

Process related information

Command Usability
top List all processes sorted by their current system resource usage. Displays a continually
updated display of processes (By default 3 seconds). Use q key to exit top.

ps List processes currently running on current shell session

ps -u root List all of the processes and commands root is running
ps aux List all the processes by all users on the current system

Section 1.5: Searching for files by patterns in name/contents

A common and task of someone using the Linux Command Line (shell) is to search for
files/directories with a certain name or containing certain text. There are 2 commands you
should familiarise yourself with in order to accomplish this:
Find files by name
find /var/www -name '*.css'

This will print out the full path/filename to all files under /var/www that end in .css. Example
output:
/var/www/html/text-cursor.css
/var/www/html/style.css
For more info:
man find
Find files containing text
grep font /var/www/html/style.css

This will print all lines containing the pattern font in the specified file. Example output:
font-weight: bold;
font-family: monospace;
Another example:
grep font /var/www/html/
GoalKicker.com – Linux® Notes for Professionals 7
This doesn't work as you'd hoped. You get:
grep: /var/www/html/: Is a directory
You need to grep recursively to make it work, using the -R option:
grep -R font /var/www/html/
Hey nice! Check out the output of this one:
/var/www/html/admin/index.php: echo '<font color=red><b>Error: no
dice</b></font><br/>';
/var/www/html/admin/index.php: echo '<font color=red><b>Error: try
again</b></font><br/>';
/var/www/html/style.css: font-weight: bold;
/var/www/html/style.css: font-family: monospace;

Notice that when grep is matching multiple files, it prefixes the matched lines with the filenames.

You can use the -

h option to get rid of that, if you want.

For more info:

man grep

Section 1.6: File Manipulation

Files and directories (another name for folders) are at the heart of Linux, so being able to create,
view, move, and delete them from the command line is very important and quite powerful. These
file manipulation commands allow you to perform the same tasks that a graphical file explorer
would perform.

Create an empty text file called myFile:

touch myFile
Rename myFile to myFirstFile:
mv myFile myFirstFile
View the contents of a file:
cat myFirstFile
View the content of a file with pager (one screenful at a time):
less myFirstFile
View the first several lines of a file:
head myFirstFile
View the last several lines of a file:
tail myFirstFile
Edit a file:
GoalKicker.com – Linux® Notes for Professionals 8
vi myFirstFile
See what files are in your current working directory:
ls
Create an empty directory called myFirstDirectory:
mkdir myFirstDirectory
Create multi path directory: (creates two directories, src and myFirstDirectory)
mkdir -p src/myFirstDirectory
Move the file into the directory:
mv myFirstFile myFirstDirectory/
You can also rename the file:
user@linux-computer:~$ mv myFirstFile secondFileName
Change the current working directory to myFirstDirectory:
cd myFirstDirectory
Delete a file:
rm myFirstFile
Move into the parent directory (which is represented as ..):
cd ..
Delete an empty directory:
rmdir myFirstDirectory
Delete a non-empty directory (i.e. contains files and/or other directories):
rm -rf myFirstDirectory
Make note that when deleting directories, that you delete ./ not / that will wipe your whole
filesystem.

Section 1.7: File/Directory details

The ls command has several options that can be used together to show more information.
Details/Rights
The l option shows the file permissions, size, and last modified date. So if the root directory
contained a dir called test and a file someFile the command:
GoalKicker.com – Linux® Notes for Professionals 9
user@linux-computer:~$ ls -l
Would output something like
-rw-r--r-- 1 user users 70 Jul 22 13:36 someFile.txt
drwxrwxrwx 2 user users 4096 Jul 21 07:18 test

The permissions are in format of drwxrwxrwx. The first character represents the file type d if it's
a directory -otherwise. The next three rwx are the permissions the user has over the file, the next
three are the permissions the group has over the file, and the last three are the permissions
everyone else has over the file.
The r of rwx stands for if a file can be read, the w represents if the file can be modified, and the x
stands for if the file can be executed. If any permission isn't granted a - will be in place of r, w, or
x.

So from above user can read and modify someFile.txt but the group has only read-only rights.

To change rights you can use the chmod ### fileName command if you have sudo rights. r is
represented by a value of 4, w is represented by 2, and x is represented by a 1. So if only you
want to be able to modify the contents to the test directory
Owner rwx = 4+2+1 = 7
Group r-x = 4+0+1 = 5
Other r-x = 4+0+1 = 5
So the whole command is
chmod 755 test
Now doing a ls -l would show something like
drwxr-xr-x 2 user users 4096 Jul 21 07:20 test
Readable Size
Used in conjunction with the l option the h option shows file sizes that are human readable.

Running
user@linux-computer:~$ ls -lh
Would output:
total 4166
-rw-r--r-- 1 user users 70 Jul 22 13:36 someFile.txt
drwxrwxrwx 2 user users 4.0K Jul 21 07:18 test
Hidden
To view hidden files use the a option. For example
user@linux-computer:~$ ls -a
Might list
GoalKicker.com – Linux® Notes for Professionals 10
.profile
someFile.txt
test
Total Directory Size
To view the size of the current directory use the s option (the h option can also be used to make
the size more
readable).
user@linux-computer:~$ ls -s
Outputs
total 4166
someFile.txt test
Recursive View