4.1.2. How Does It Work?

The shell prompt is managed by bash , the Bourne-again shell. bash got its name from the fact that it is a successor to the original Unix shell, sh , which is also known as the Bourne shell (after its author, Steve Bourne). bash is a command editor, command interpreter, job controller, and programming language.

When bash receives a command, it splits it into words and uses globbing to expand any ambiguous filenames. bash next checks to see if the first word is a built-in command. If not, it treats it as an external command or program and searches a list of directories to find that program. It executes that program, passing the other words to the program as arguments. Almost all Linux commands are external programs.

Linux commands generally accept three types of arguments:

Options

These start with a hyphen or double-hyphen ( - or -- ) and modify the way the command operates. For example, the ls (list-files) command will include hidden files in its output if the -a argument is given, and will list detailed information about files when the -l option is specified. These options may be used individually, used together in any order, or combined after one hyphen if they all use a single hyphen:

$ ls -l

$ ls -a

$ ls -l -a

$ ls -a -l

$ ls -al

$ ls -la

Positional arguments

These have significance according to the order in which they are specified. For example, the cp (copy) command accepts two or more filenames:

$ cp one two

one is the name of the file being copied, and two is the name that will be given to the new copy. If you swap the position of the two arguments, the meaning of the command is changed. Options may be placed before, between, or after positional arguments; usually, the positions of the options don't matter.

Options with a value

These combine options with positional arguments. An option with a value may be placed before or after other arguments, but the value must be placed directly after the option.

For example, the ls command accepts the -w option (width of output), which is specified along with a number indicating the desired width of output in characters. This can be combined with the -a and -l options in any order, as long as the number immediately follows the -w option:

$ ls -a -l -w 60

$ ls -w 60 -al

$ ls -l -w 60 -a

$ ls -l -w60 -a

$ ls -alw60