Shellutils

The GNU Shell Utilities are the basic shell-manipulation utilities of the GNU Operating System.

Fileutils, Shellutils, and Textutils have been combined into the GNU Coreutils package. All further development and discussion is now taking place as Coreutils. The last separate versions were fileutils-4.1.11, textutils-2.1, and sh-utils-2.0.15. The first major release of coreutils-5.0 was announced on Fri, 4 April 2003.

Please refer to the new coreutils home page at http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ for more information.

Everyone is encouraged to update to the latest stable version of coreutils. However it is known that several distributions which released and shipped prior to the coreutils release were shipped with the previous stable versions of the individual fileutils, shellutils, and textutils packages. Those distributing these utilities are encouraged to update to coreutils at the time of their next major update.

The tools supplied with this package are:

• [ - Check file types and compare values
• basename - Removes the path prefix from a given pathname.
• chroot - Changes the root directory.
• date - Prints/sets the system date and time.
• dirname - Removes the last level or filename from a given pathname.
• echo - Prints a line of text.
• env - Displays/modifies the environment.
• expr - Evaluates expressions.
• factor - Prints prime factors.
• false - Returns an unsuccessful exit status.
• groups - Print the groups that the user is a member of.
• hostid - Print the numeric identifier for the current host
• hostname - Print or set the machine name.
• id - Print real/effective uid/gid.
• logname - Print current login name.
• nice - Modify scheduling priority.
• nohup - Allows a command to continue running after logging out.
• pathchk - Check file name portability.
• pinky - Lightweight finger
• printenv - Prints environment variables.
• printf - Formats and prints data.
• pwd - Print the current working directory.
• seq - Print numeric sequences.
• sleep - Suspends execution for a specified time.
• stty - Print/change terminal settings.
• su - Allows you to adopt the id of another user or superuser.
• tee - Sends output to multiple files.
• test - Evaluates an expression.
• true - Returns a successful exit status.
• tty - Print terminal name.
• uname - Print system information.
• users - Print current user names.
• who - Print a list of all users currently logged in.
• whoami - Print effective user id.
• yes - Print a string repeatedly.

Online Manual

The manual is available in the info system of the GNU Operating System. Use info to access the top level info page. Use info Shell to access the Shell Utilities section directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please check the FAQ for the core utilities for answers to your most frequently asked questions. This FAQ contains answers to questions asked on the mailing lists and newsgroups.

Downloading

The latest version of fileutils is now included in the coreutils package. Please refer to the coreutils page for downloading information.

How to Get Help

For general discussion of bugs in the utilities the news group gnu.utils.bug is probably the most appropriate forum. An archive of the bug report mailing list is available at http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-sh-utils/. An archive of the coreutils bug report mailing list is available at http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/.

How to Help

To contact the maintainers, either to report a bug or to contribute fixes or improvements, send mail to bug-coreutils@gnu.org.

What's in a name?

The Shell Utilities are sometimes called sh-utils and sometimes shellutils. This originally came about due to file name length limitations on older systems where saving two characters were important and now is important for legacy support. But it can be confusing. If you are looking for a specific file path that contains this in the name and can't find what you are looking for then try the other spelling of the name and you will likely find the right file.

Now that the Shell Utilities have been combined with the File and Text utilities into the combined Core Utilities, this confusion with the name of shellutils versus sh-utils should die out as people upgrade to the newer versions.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@www.gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2003/05/27 03:31:24 $