What happens when you run a Linux command? This simple act can appear straightforward, but many different things can actually occur, depending on whether you’re running an executable program, a shell ...

It isn’t uncommon these days for a programmer’s editor to offer you help about what you are typing, ranging from a pop up with choices to a full-blown code template. If you have written a million ...

Linux’s compgen command is not actually a Linux command. In other words, it’s not implemented as an executable file, but is instead a bash builtin. That means that it’s part of the bash executable. So ...

The first software that I was actually paid to develop was a 2-page shell script that prompted the user for a dozen or so pieces of information, before launching a set of cooperating processes. Those ...

If you aren’t a Linux user and you watch someone who knows what they are doing use Bash — the popular command line interpreter — you might get the impression they type much faster than they actually ...

Few aspects of Unix system administration are more intimate than the relationship between the admin and their chosen shell. After all, the shell is the most fundamental interface to the system, the ...

When you use Terminal in 10.3 and 10.4, you’re probably using the bash shell—it’s the default, unless you’re using an upgrade install that was previously using tcsh. If you’re not familiar with what a ...