Provided by: ksh93u+m_1.0.8-1.2_amd64 
NAME
ksh, rksh - KornShell, a standard/restricted command and programming language
SYNOPSIS
ksh [ ±abcefhiklmnprstuvxBCDEGH ] [ ±o option ] ... [ - ] [ arg ... ]
rksh [ ±abcefhiklmnpstuvxBCDEGH ] [ ±o option ] ... [ - ] [ arg ... ]
DESCRIPTION
Ksh is a command and programming language that executes commands read from a terminal or a file. Rksh is
a restricted version of the command interpreter ksh; it is used to set up login names and execution
environments whose capabilities are more controlled than those of the standard shell. See Invocation
below for the meaning of arguments to the shell.
Definitions.
A metacharacter is one of the following characters:
; & ( ) | < > new-line space tab
A blank is a tab or a space. An identifier is a sequence of letters, digits, or underscores starting
with a letter or underscore. Identifiers are used as components of variable names. A vname is a
sequence of one or more identifiers separated by a . and optionally preceded by a .. Vnames are used as
function and variable names. A word is a sequence of characters from the character set defined by the
current locale, excluding non-quoted metacharacters.
A command is a sequence of characters in the syntax of the shell language. The shell reads each command
and carries out the desired action either directly or by invoking separate utilities. A built-in command
is a command that is carried out by the shell itself without creating a separate process. Some commands
are built in purely for convenience and are not documented here. Built-ins that cause side effects in
the shell environment and built-ins that are found before performing a path search (see Execution below)
are documented here. For historical reasons, some of these built-ins behave differently than other
built-ins and are called special built-ins.
Commands.
A simple-command is a list of variable assignments (see Variable Assignments below) or a sequence of
blank separated words which may be preceded by a list of variable assignments (see Environment below).
The first word specifies the name of the command to be executed. Except as specified below, the
remaining words are passed as arguments to the invoked command. The command name is passed as argument 0
(see exec(2)). The value of a simple-command is its exit status; 0-255 if it terminates normally;
256+signum if it terminates abnormally (the name of the signal corresponding to the exit status can be
obtained via the -l option of the kill built-in utility).
A pipeline is a sequence of one or more commands separated by |. The standard output of each command but
the last is connected by a socketpair(2) or (if the posix shell option is on) by a pipe(2) to the
standard input of the next command. Each command except the last is run asynchronously in a subshell
(see Subshells below). If the monitor or pipefail option is on, or the pipeline is preceded by the
reserved word time, then the shell waits for all component commands in the pipeline to terminate;
otherwise, the shell only waits for the last component command. The exit status of a pipeline is the
exit status of its last component command, unless the pipefail option is enabled. Each pipeline can be
preceded by the reserved word ! which causes the exit status of the pipeline to become 0 if the exit
status of the last command is non-zero, and 1 if the exit status of the last command is 0.
A list is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by ;, &, |&, &&, or ||, and optionally terminated
by ;, &, or |&. Of these five symbols, ;, &, and |& have equal precedence, which is lower than that of
&& and ||. The symbols && and || also have equal precedence. A semicolon (;) causes sequential
execution of the preceding pipeline; an ampersand (&) causes asynchronous execution of the preceding
pipeline (i.e., the shell does not wait for that pipeline to finish). The symbol |& causes asynchronous
execution of the preceding pipeline with a two-way pipe established to the parent shell; the standard
input and output of the spawned pipeline can be written to and read from by the parent shell by applying
the redirection operators <& and >& with arg p to commands and by using -p option of the built-in
commands read and print described later. The symbol && (||) causes the list following it to be executed
only if the preceding pipeline returns a zero (non-zero) value. One or more new-lines may appear in a
list instead of a semicolon, to delimit a command. The first item of the first pipeline of a list that
is a simple command not beginning with a redirection, and not occurring within a while, until, or if
list, can be preceded by a semicolon. This semicolon is ignored unless the showme option is enabled as
described with the set built-in below.
A command is either a simple-command or a compound-command, which is one of the following. Unless
otherwise stated, the value returned by a command is that of the last simple-command executed in the
command.
for vname [ in word ... ] ;do list ;done
Each time a for command is executed, vname is set to the next word taken from the in word list.
If in word ... is omitted, then the for command executes the do list once for each positional
parameter that is set starting from 1 (see Parameter Expansion below). Execution ends when there
are no more words in the list.
for (( [expr1] ; [expr2] ; [expr3] )) ;do list ;done
The arithmetic expression expr1 is evaluated first (see Arithmetic Evaluation below). The
arithmetic expression expr2 is repeatedly evaluated until it evaluates to zero and when non-zero,
list is executed and the arithmetic expression expr3 evaluated. If any expression is omitted,
then it behaves as if it evaluated to 1.
select vname [ in word ... ] ;do list ;done
A select command prints on standard error (file descriptor 2) the set of words, each preceded by a
number. If in word ... is omitted, then the positional parameters starting from 1 are used
instead (see Parameter Expansion below). The PS3 prompt is printed and a line is read from the
standard input. If this line consists of the number of one of the listed words, then the value of
the variable vname is set to the word corresponding to this number. If this line is empty, the
selection list is printed again. Otherwise the value of the variable vname is set to the empty
string. The contents of the line read from standard input is saved in the variable REPLY. The
list is executed for each selection until a break or end-of-file is encountered. If the REPLY
variable is set to the empty string by the execution of list, then the selection list is printed
before displaying the PS3 prompt for the next selection.
case word in [ [(]pattern [ | pattern ] ... ) list ;; ] ... esac
A case command executes the list associated with the first pattern that matches word. The form of
the patterns is the same as that used for pathname expansion (see Pathname Expansion below). The
;; operator causes execution of case to terminate. If ;& is used in place of ;; the next
subsequent list, if any, is executed.
if list ;then list [ ;elif list ;then list ] ... [ ;else list ] ;fi
The list following if is executed and, if it returns a zero exit status, the list following the
first then is executed. Otherwise, the list following elif is executed and, if its value is zero,
the list following the next then is executed. Failing each successive elif list, the else list is
executed. If the if list has non-zero exit status and there is no else list, then the if command
returns a zero exit status.
while list ;do list ;done
until list ;do list ;done
A while command repeatedly executes the while list and, if the exit status of the last command in
the list is zero, executes the do list; otherwise the loop terminates. If no commands in the do
list are executed, then the while command returns a zero exit status; until may be used in place
of while to negate the loop termination test.
while inputredirection ;do list ;done
Filescan loop. This is defined by a lone input redirection following while (see Input/Output
below). It is faster than using the read built-in command in a regular while loop. The shell
reads lines from the file or stream opened by inputredirection until the end is reached or the
loop is broken. For each line read, the command list is executed with the line's contents
assigned to the REPLY variable and the line's fields split into the positional parameters (see
Field Splitting and Positional Parameters below). Within the list, standard input is redirected
to /dev/null. If the posix compatibility shell option is on, this loop type is disabled and
inputredirection is processed like a lone redirection in any other context.
((expression))
The expression is evaluated using the rules for arithmetic evaluation described below. If the
value of the arithmetic expression is non-zero, the exit status is 0, otherwise the exit status is
1.
(list)
Execute list in a subshell (see Subshells below). Note, that if two adjacent open parentheses are
needed for nesting, a space must be inserted to avoid evaluation as an arithmetic command as
described above.
{ list;}
list is simply executed. Note that unlike the metacharacters ( and ), { and } are reserved words
and must occur at the beginning of a line or after a ; in order to be recognized.
[[ expression ]]
Evaluates expression and returns a zero exit status when expression is true. See Conditional
Expressions below, for a description of expression.
function varname { list ;} [ redirection ... ]
varname () compound-command [ redirection ... ]
Define a function which is referenced by varname. A function whose varname contains a . is
called a discipline function and the portion of the varname preceding the last . must refer to an
existing variable. The body of the function is the list of commands between { and }. A function
defined with the function varname syntax can also be used as an argument to the . special built-
in command to get the equivalent behavior as if the varname() syntax were used to define it. (See
Functions below.)
namespace identifier { list ;}
Defines or uses the name space identifier and runs the commands in list in this name space. (See
Name Spaces below.)
time [ pipeline ]
If pipeline is omitted the user and system time for the current shell and completed child
processes is printed on standard error. Otherwise, pipeline is executed and the elapsed time as
well as the user and system time are printed on standard error. The TIMEFORMAT variable may be
set to a format string that specifies how the timing information should be displayed. See Shell
Variables below for a description of the TIMEFORMAT variable.
The following reserved words are recognized as reserved only when they are the first word of a command
and are not quoted:
if then else elif fi case esac for while until do done { } function select time [[ ]] !
Variable Assignments.
One or more variable assignments can start a simple command or can be arguments to the typeset, enum,
export, or readonly special built-in commands as well as to other declaration commands created as types.
The syntax for an assignment is of the form:
varname=word
varname[word]=word
No space is permitted between varname and the = or between = and word.
varname=(assign_list)
No space is permitted between varname and the =. The variable varname is unset before the
assignment. An assign_list can be one of the following:
word ...
Indexed array assignment.
[word]=word ...
Associative array assignment. If preceded by typeset -a this will create an
indexed array instead.
assignment ...
Compound variable assignment. This creates a compound variable varname with
subvariables of the form varname.name, where name is the name portion of
assignment. The value of varname will contain all the assignment elements.
Additional assignments made to subvariables of varname will also be displayed as
part of the value of varname. If no assignments are specified, varname will be a
compound variable allowing subsequence child elements to be defined.
typeset [options] assignment ...
Nested variable assignment. Multiple assignments can be specified by separating
each of them with a ;. The previous value is unset before the assignment. Other
declaration commands such as readonly, enum, and other declaration commands can be
used in place of typeset.
. filename
Include the assignment commands contained in filename.
In addition, a += can be used in place of the = to signify adding to or appending to the previous value.
When += is applied to an arithmetic type, word is evaluated as an arithmetic expression and added to the
current value. When applied to a string variable, the value defined by word is appended to the value.
For compound assignments, the previous value is not unset and the new values are appended to the current
ones provided that the types are compatible.
The right hand side of a variable assignment undergoes all the expansion listed below except word
splitting, brace expansion, and pathname expansion. When the left hand side is an assignment is a
compound variable and the right hand is the name of a compound variable, the compound variable on the
right will be copied or appended to the compound variable on the left.
Comments.
A word beginning with # causes that word and all the following characters up to a new-line to be ignored.
Aliasing.
The first word of each command is replaced by the text of an alias if an alias for this word has been
defined. An alias name consists of any number of characters excluding metacharacters, quoting
characters, file expansion characters, parameter expansion and command substitution characters, the
characters / and =. The replacement string can contain any valid shell script including the
metacharacters listed above. The first word of each command in the replaced text, other than any that
are in the process of being replaced, will be tested for aliases. If the last character of the alias
value is a blank then the word following the alias will also be checked for alias substitution. Aliases
can be used to redefine built-in commands but cannot be used to redefine the reserved words listed above.
Aliases can be created and listed with the alias command and can be removed with the unalias command.
Aliasing is performed when scripts are read, not while they are executed. Therefore, for an alias to
take effect, the alias definition command has to be executed before the command which references the
alias is read.
The following aliases are automatically preset when the shell is invoked as an interactive shell. Preset
aliases can be unset or redefined.
history=′hist -l′
r=′hist -s′
Tilde Expansion.
After alias substitution is performed, each word is checked to see if it begins with an unquoted ∼. For
tilde expansion, word also refers to the word portion of parameter expansion (see Parameter Expansion
below). If a word is preceded by a tilde, then it is checked up to a / to see if it matches a user name
in the password database (see getpwname(3)). If a match is found, the ∼ and the matched login name are
replaced by the login directory of the matched user. If no match is found, the original text is left
unchanged. A ∼ by itself, or in front of a /, is replaced by $HOME, unless the HOME variable is unset,
in which case the current user's home directory as configured in the operating system is used. A ∼
followed by a + or - is replaced by $PWD or $OLDPWD respectively.
In addition, when expanding a variable assignment (see Variable Assignments above), tilde expansion is
attempted when the value of the assignment begins with a ∼, and when a ∼ appears after a :. A : also
terminates a user name following a ∼.
The tilde expansion mechanism may be extended or modified by defining one of the discipline functions
.sh.tilde.set or .sh.tilde.get (see Functions and Discipline Functions below). If either exists, then
upon encountering a tilde word to expand, that function is called with the tilde word assigned to either
.sh.value (for the .sh.tilde.set function) or .sh.tilde (for the .sh.tilde.get function). Performing
tilde expansion within a discipline function will not recursively call that function, but default tilde
expansion remains active, so literal tildes should still be quoted where required. Either function may
assign a replacement string to .sh.value. If this value is non-empty and does not start with a ∼, it
replaces the default tilde expansion when the function terminates. Otherwise, the tilde expansion is
left unchanged.
Subshells.
A subshell is a separate execution environment that is a complete duplicate of the current shell
environment, except for two things: all traps are reset to default except those for signals that are
being ignored, and subshells cannot be interactive (i.e., they have no command prompt). Changes made
within a subshell do not affect the parent environment and are lost when the subshell exits.
Particular care should be taken not to confuse a subshell with a newly invoked shell that is merely a
child process of the current shell, and which (unlike a subshell) starts from scratch in terms of
variables and functions and may be interactive. Beware of shell tutorials on the Internet that confuse
these.
Subshells cannot be created or invoked using any command. Instead, the following are automatically run
in a subshell:
• any command or group of commands enclosed in parentheses;
• command substitutions of the first and third form (see Command Substitution below);
• process substitutions (see Process Substitution below);
• all elements of a pipeline except the last;
• any command executed asynchronously (i.e., in a background process).
Creating processes is expensive, so as a performance optimization, a subshell of a non-interactive shell
may share the process of its parent environment. Such a subshell is known as a virtual subshell.
Subshells are virtual unless or until something (such as asynchronous execution, or an attempt to set a
process limit using the ulimit built-in command, or other implementation- or system-defined requirements)
makes it necessary to fork(2) it into a separate process. Barring any bugs in the shell, virtual
subshells should be indistinguishable from real subshells except by their execution speed and their
process ID. See the description of the .sh.pid variable below for more information.
Command Substitution.
The standard output from a command list enclosed in parentheses preceded by a dollar sign ( $(list) ), or
in a brace group preceded by a dollar sign ( ${ list;} ), or in a pair of grave accents (``) may be used
as part or all of a word; trailing new-lines are removed. In the second case, the { and } are treated as
a reserved words so that { must be followed by a blank and } must appear at the beginning of the line or
follow a ;. In the third (obsolete) form, the string between the quotes is processed for special quoting
characters before the command is executed (see Quoting below). The command substitution $(cat file) can
be replaced by the equivalent but faster $(<file). The command substitution $(n<#) will expand to the
current byte offset for file descriptor n. Except for the second form, the command list is run in a
subshell so that no side effects are possible. For the second form, the final } will be recognized as a
reserved word after any token.
Arithmetic Expansion.
An arithmetic expression enclosed in double parentheses preceded by a dollar sign ( $(()) ) is replaced
by the value of the arithmetic expression within the double parentheses.
Process Substitution.
Each command argument of the form <(list) or >(list) will run process list asynchronously connected to
some file in /dev/fd if this directory exists, or else a fifo in a temporary directory. The name of this
file will become the argument to the command. If the form with > is selected then writing on this file
will provide input for list. If < is used, then the file passed as an argument will contain the output
of the list process. For example,
paste <(cut -f1 file1) <(cut -f3 file2) | tee >(process1) >(process2)
cuts fields 1 and 3 from the files file1 and file2 respectively, pastes the results together, and sends
it to the processes process1 and process2, as well as putting it onto the standard output. Note that the
file, which is passed as an argument to the command, is a UNIX pipe(2) so programs that expect to
lseek(2) on the file will not work.
Process substitution of the form <(list) can also be used with the < redirection operator which causes
the output of list to be standard input or the input for whatever file descriptor is specified.
Parameter Expansion.
A parameter is a variable, one or more digits, or any of the characters *, @, #, ?, -, $, and !. A
variable is denoted by a vname. To create a variable whose vname contains a ., a variable whose vname
consists of everything before the last . must already exist. A variable has a value and zero or more
attributes. Variables can be assigned values and attributes by using the typeset special built-in
command. The attributes supported by the shell are described later with the typeset special built-in
command. Exported variables pass their attributes to the environment so that a newly invoked ksh that is
a child or exec'd process of the current shell will automatically import them, unless the posix shell
option is on.
The shell supports both indexed and associative arrays. An element of an array variable is referenced by
a subscript. A subscript for an indexed array is denoted by an arithmetic expression (see Arithmetic
Evaluation below) between a [ and a ]. To assign values to an indexed array, use vname=(value ...) or
set -A vname value ... . The value of all non-negative subscripts must be in the range of 0 through
4,194,303. A negative subscript is treated as an offset from the maximum current index +1 so that -1
refers to the last element. Indexed arrays can be declared with the -a option to typeset. Indexed
arrays need not be declared. Any reference to a variable with a valid subscript is legal and an array
will be created if necessary.
An associative array is created with the -A option to typeset. A subscript for an associative array is
denoted by a string enclosed between [ and ].
Referencing any array without a subscript is equivalent to referencing the array with subscript 0.
The value of a variable may be assigned by writing:
vname=value [ vname=value ] ...
or
vname[subscript]=value [ vname[subscript]=value ] ...
Note that no space is allowed before or after the =.
Attributes assigned by the typeset special built-in command apply to all elements of the array. An array
element can be a simple variable, a compound variable or an array variable. An element of an indexed
array can be either an indexed array or an associative array. An element of an associative array can
also be either. To refer to an array element that is part of an array element, concatenate the subscript
in brackets. For example, to refer to the foobar element of an associative array that is defined as the
third element of the indexed array, use ${vname[3][foobar]}
A nameref is a variable that is a reference to another variable. A nameref is created with the -n
attribute of typeset or with the equivalent nameref command. The value of the variable at the time of
that command becomes the variable that will be referenced whenever the nameref variable is used. The
name of a nameref cannot contain a .. When a variable or function name contains a ., and the portion of
the name up to the first . matches the name of a nameref, the variable referred to is obtained by
replacing the nameref portion with the name of the variable referenced by the nameref. If a nameref is
used as the index of a for loop, a name reference is established for each item in the list.
A nameref provides a convenient way to refer to the variable inside a function whose name is passed as an
argument to a function. For example, if the name of a variable is passed as the first argument to a
function, the command typeset -n var=$1 (a.k.a. nameref var=$1) inside the function causes references
and assignments to var to be references and assignments to the variable whose name has been passed to the
function. Note that, for this to work, the positional parameter must be assigned directly to the nameref
as part of the declaration command, as in the example above; only that idiom can allow one function to
access a local variable of another. For instance, typeset -n var; var=$1 won't cross that barrier, nor
will typeset foo=$1; typeset -n var=foo.
If any of the floating point attributes, -E, -F, or -X, or the integer attribute, -i, is set for vname,
then the value is subject to arithmetic evaluation as described below.
Positional parameters, parameters denoted by a number, may be assigned values with the set special built-
in command. Parameter $0 is set from argument zero when the shell is invoked.
The character $ is used to introduce substitutable parameters.
${parameter}
The shell reads all the characters from ${ to the matching } as part of the same word even if it
contains braces or metacharacters. The value, if any, of the parameter is substituted. The
braces are required when parameter is followed by a letter, digit, or underscore that is not to be
interpreted as part of its name, when the variable name contains a .. The braces are also
required when a variable is subscripted unless it is part of an Arithmetic Expression or a
Conditional Expression. If parameter is one or more digits then it is a positional parameter. A
positional parameter of more than one digit must be enclosed in braces. If parameter is * or @,
then all the positional parameters, starting with $1, are substituted (separated by a field
separator character). If an array vname with last subscript * @, or for indexed arrays of the
form sub1 .. sub2. is used, then the value for each of the elements between sub1 and sub2
inclusive (or all elements for * and @) is substituted, separated by the first character of the
value of IFS.
${#parameter}
If parameter is * or @, the number of positional parameters is substituted. Otherwise, the length
of the value of the parameter is substituted.
${#vname[*]}
${#vname[@]}
The number of elements in the array vname is substituted.
${@vname}
Expands to the type name (See Type Variables below) or attributes of the variable referred to by
vname.
${!vname}
Expands to the name of the variable referred to by vname. This will be vname except when vname is
a name reference.
${!vname[subscript]}
Expands to name of the subscript unless subscript is *, @. or of the form sub1 .. sub2. When
subscript is *, the list of array subscripts for vname is generated. For a variable that is not
an array, the value is 0 if the variable is set. Otherwise it is the empty string. When
subscript is @, same as above, except that when used in double quotes, each array subscript yields
a separate argument. When subscript is of the form sub1 .. sub2 it expands to the list of
subscripts between sub1 and sub2 inclusive using the same quoting rules as @.
${!prefix@}
${!prefix*}
These both expand to the names of the variables whose names begin with prefix. The expansions
otherwise work like $@ and $*, respectively (see under Quoting below).
${parameter:-word}
If parameter is set and has a non-empty value, then substitute its value; otherwise substitute
word.
${parameter:=word}
If parameter is not set or has the empty string value, then set it to word; the value of the
parameter is then substituted. Positional parameters may not be assigned to in this way.
${parameter:?word}
If parameter is set and has a non-empty value, then substitute its value; otherwise, print word
and exit from the shell (if not interactive). If word is omitted then a standard message is
printed.
${parameter:+word}
If parameter is set and has a non-empty value then substitute word; otherwise substitute the empty
string.
In the above, word is not evaluated unless it is to be used as the substituted string, so that, in the
following example, pwd is executed only if d is not set or has the empty string value:
print ${d:-$(pwd)}
If the colon (:) is omitted from the above expressions, then the shell only checks whether parameter is
set or not.
${parameter:offset:length}
${parameter:offset}
Expands to the portion of the value of parameter starting at the character (counting from 0)
determined by expanding offset as an arithmetic expression and consisting of the number of
characters determined by the arithmetic expression defined by length. In the second form, the
remainder of the value is used. If A negative offset counts backwards from the end of parameter.
Note that one or more blanks is required in front of a minus sign to prevent the shell from
interpreting the operator as :-. If parameter is * or @, or is an array name indexed by * or @,
then offset and length refer to the array index and number of elements respectively. A negative
offset is taken relative to one greater than the highest subscript for indexed arrays. The order
for associative arrays is unspecified.
${parameter#pattern}
${parameter##pattern}
If the shell pattern matches the beginning of the value of parameter, then the value of this
expansion is the value of the parameter with the matched portion deleted; otherwise the value of
this parameter is substituted. In the first form the smallest matching pattern is deleted and in
the second form the largest matching pattern is deleted. When parameter is @, *, or an array
variable with subscript @ or *, the substring operation is applied to each element in turn.
${parameter%pattern}
${parameter%%pattern}
If the shell pattern matches the end of the value of parameter, then the value of this expansion
is the value of the parameter with the matched part deleted; otherwise substitute the value of
parameter. In the first form the smallest matching pattern is deleted and in the second form the
largest matching pattern is deleted. When parameter is @, *, or an array variable with subscript
@ or *, the substring operation is applied to each element in turn.
${parameter/pattern/string}
${parameter//pattern/string}
${parameter/#pattern/string}
${parameter/%pattern/string}
Expands parameter and replaces the longest match of pattern with the given string. Each
occurrence of \n in string is replaced by the portion of parameter that matches the n-th
subpattern. In the first form, only the first occurrence of pattern is replaced. In the second
form, each match for pattern is replaced by the given string. The third form restricts the
pattern match to the beginning of the string while the fourth form restricts the pattern match to
the end of the string. In the first and second forms, an empty pattern never matches. In the
third and fourth forms, an empty pattern matches the beginning or the end of the string,
respectively. When string is empty, the pattern will be deleted and the / in front of string may
be omitted. When parameter is @, *, or an array variable with subscript @ or *, the substitution
operation is applied to each element in turn. In this case, the string portion of word will be
re-evaluated for each element.
Shell Variables.
The following parameters are automatically set by the shell:
# The number of positional parameters in decimal.
- Options supplied to the shell on invocation or by the set command.
? The exit status returned by the last executed command. Its meaning depends on the command
or function that defines it, but there are conventions that other commands often depend on:
zero typically means 'success' or 'true', one typically means 'non-success' or 'false', and
a value greater than one typically indicates some kind of error. Only the 8 least
significant bits of $? (values 0 to 255) are preserved when the exit status is passed on to
a parent process, but within the same (sub)shell environment, it is a signed integer value
with a range of possible values as shown by the commands getconf INT_MIN and getconf
INT_MAX. Shell functions that run in the current environment may return status values in
this range.
$ The process ID of the main shell process. Note that this value will not change in a
subshell, even if the subshell runs in a different process. See also .sh.pid.
_ Initially, the value of _ is an absolute pathname of the shell or script being executed as
passed in the environment. Subsequently it is assigned the last argument of the previous
command. This parameter is not set for commands which are asynchronous. This parameter is
also used to hold the name of the matching MAIL file when checking for mail. While
defining a compound variable or a type, _ is initialized as a reference to the compound
variable or type. When a discipline function is invoked, _ is initialized as a reference
to the variable associated with the call to this function. Finally when _ is used as the
name of the first variable of a type definition, the new type is derived from the type of
the first variable. (See Type Variables below.)
! The process ID of the last background command invoked or the most recent job put in the
background with the bg built-in command.
.sh.command
When processing a DEBUG trap, this variable contains the current command line that is about
to run. The value is in the same format as the output generated by the xtrace option
(minus the preceding PS4 prompt).
.sh.edchar
This variable contains the value of the keyboard character (or sequence of characters if
the first character is an ESC, ASCII 033) that has been entered when processing a KEYBD
trap (see Key Bindings below). If the value is changed as part of the trap action, then
the new value replaces the key (or key sequence) that caused the trap.
.sh.edcol
The character position of the cursor at the time of the most recent KEYBD trap.
.sh.edmode
Upon executing a KEYBD trap action, the value of this variable is set to the ESC control
character if the shell is in vi input mode (See Vi Editing Mode below), or to the empty
string value otherwise.
.sh.edtext
The characters in the input buffer at the time of the most recent KEYBD trap. The variable
is unset when not processing a KEYBD trap.
.sh.file
The pathname of the file that contains the current command.
.sh.fun
The name of the current function that is being executed.
.sh.level
Set to the current call depth of functions and dot scripts. Normally, this variable is
read-only, but while executing a DEBUG trap, its value may be changed to switch the current
function scope to that of the specified level for the duration of the trap run, making it
possible to access a parent scope for debugging purposes. When trap execution ends, the
variable and the scope are restored. It is an error to assign a value lower than 0 (the
global scope) or higher than the current call depth.
.sh.lineno
Set during a DEBUG trap to the line number for the caller of each function.
.sh.match
Whenever a match is found in a pattern matching operation using either the [[ compound
command (see Conditional Expressions below) or the expansions ${parameter#pattern},
${parameter%pattern}, ${parameter/pattern/string}, or one of their variants (see Parameter
Expansion above), the match and its subpattern matches are stored in this indexed array,
overwriting its previous values. The 0-th element stores the complete match and the i-th
element stores the i-th submatch. For //, the array is two-dimensional, with the first
subscript indicating the most recent match and subpattern match, and the second subscript
indicating which match with 0 representing the first match. If no match is found,
.sh.match is not reset or modified. Note that even matching operations performed on the
.sh.match variable itself will overwrite it upon finding a match.
.sh.math
Used for defining arithmetic functions (see Arithmetic Evaluation below) and stores the
list of user defined arithmetic functions.
.sh.name
Set to the name of the variable at the time that a discipline function is invoked.
.sh.subscript
Set to the name subscript of the variable at the time that a discipline function is
invoked.
.sh.subshell
The current depth for subshells and command substitution.
.sh.pid
Set to the process ID of the current shell process. Unlike $$, this is updated in a
subshell when it forks into a new process. Note that a virtual subshell may have to fork
mid-execution due to various system- and implementation-dependent requirements, so the
value should not be counted on to remain the same from one command to the next. If a
persistent process ID is required for a subshell, it must be ensured it is running in its
own process first. Any attempt to set a process limit using the ulimit built-in command,
such as ulimit -t unlimited 2>/dev/null, is a reliable way to make a subshell fork if it
hasn't already.
.sh.ppid
Set to the process ID of the parent of the current shell process. Unlike $PPID, this is
updated in a subshell when it forks into a new process. The same note as for .sh.pid
applies.
.sh.value
Set to the value of the variable at the time that the set or append discipline function is
invoked. When a user defined arithmetic function is invoked, the value of .sh.value is
saved and .sh.value is set to long double precision floating point. .sh.value is restored
when the function returns.
.sh.version
Set to a value that identifies the version of this shell.
COLUMNS
Width of the terminal window in character positions. Updated automatically at
initialization and on receiving a SIGWINCH signal. The shell uses the value to define the
width of the edit window for the shell edit modes and for printing select lists.
KSH_VERSION
A name reference to .sh.version.
LINENO The current line number within the script or function being executed.
LINES Height of the terminal window in lines. Updated automatically at initialization and on
receiving a SIGWINCH signal. The shell uses the value to determine the column length for
printing select lists: they are printed vertically until about two thirds of LINES lines
are filled.
OLDPWD The previous working directory set by the cd command.
OPTARG The value of the last option argument processed by the getopts built-in command.
OPTIND The index of the last option argument processed by the getopts built-in command.
PPID The process ID of the parent of the main shell process. Note that this value will not
change in a subshell, even if the subshell runs in a different process. See also .sh.ppid.
PWD The present working directory set by the cd command.
RANDOM Each time this variable is referenced, a random integer, uniformly distributed between 0
and 32767, is generated. The sequence of random numbers can be initialized by assigning a
numeric value to RANDOM.
REPLY This variable is set by the select statement and by the read built-in command when no
arguments are supplied.
SECONDS
Each time this variable is referenced, the number of seconds since shell invocation is
returned. If this variable is assigned a value, then the value returned upon reference
will be the value that was assigned plus the number of seconds since the assignment.
SHLVL An integer variable that is incremented and exported each time the shell is invoked. If
SHLVL is not in the environment when the shell is invoked, it is set to 1.
The following variables are used by the shell:
CDPATH The search path for the cd command.
EDITOR If the VISUAL variable is not set, the value of this variable will be checked for certain
patterns and the corresponding editing option will be turned on as described with VISUAL
below.
ENV If this variable is set, then parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic
expansion are performed on the value to generate the pathname of the script that will be
executed when the shell is invoked interactively (see Invocation below). This file is
typically used for alias and function definitions. The default value is $HOME/.kshrc. On
systems that support a system wide /etc/ksh.kshrc initialization file, if the filename
generated by the expansion of ENV begins with /./ or ././ the system wide initialization
file will not be executed.
FCEDIT Obsolete name for the default editor name for the hist command. FCEDIT is not used when
HISTEDIT is set.
FIGNORE
A pattern that defines the set of filenames that will be ignored when performing filename
matching.
FPATH The search path for function definitions. The directories in this path are searched for a
file with the same name as the function or command when a function with the -u attribute is
referenced and when a command is not found. If an executable file with the name of that
command is found, then it is read and executed in the current environment. Unlike PATH,
the current directory must be represented explicitly by . rather than by adjacent :
characters or a beginning or ending :.
histchars
This variable can be used to specify up to three ASCII characters that control history
expansion (see History Expansion below). The first (default: !) signals the start of a
history expansion. The second (default: ^) is used for short-form substitutions. The
third (default: #), when found as the first character of a word, causes history expansion
to be skipped for the rest of the words on the line. Multi-byte characters (e.g. UTF-8)
are not supported and produce undefined results.
HISTCMD
Number of the current command in the history file.
HISTEDIT
Name for the default editor name for the hist command.
HISTFILE
If this variable is set when the shell is invoked, then the value is the pathname of the
file that will be used to store the command history (see Command Re-entry below).
HISTSIZE
If this variable is set when the shell is invoked, then the number of previously entered
commands that are accessible by this shell will be greater than or equal to this number.
The default is 512.
HOME The default argument (home directory) for the cd command.
IFS Internal field separators, normally space, tab, and new-line that are used to separate the
results of command substitution or parameter expansion and to separate fields with the
built-in command read. The first character of the IFS variable is used to separate
arguments for the "$*" expansion (see Quoting below). Each single occurrence of an IFS
character in the string to be split that is not in the isspace character class, and any
adjacent characters in IFS that are in the isspace character class, delimit a field. One
or more characters in IFS that belong to the isspace character class delimit a field. In
addition, if the same isspace character appears consecutively inside IFS and the posix
shell option is not on, this character is treated as if it were not in the isspace class -
for example, if IFS consists of two tab characters, then two adjacent tab characters
delimit an empty field.
JOBMAX This variable defines the maximum number running background jobs that can run at a time.
When this limit is reached, the shell will wait for a job to complete before starting a new
job.
LANG This variable determines the locale category for any category not specifically selected
with a variable starting with LC_ or LANG.
LC_ALL This variable overrides the value of the LANG variable and any other LC_ variable.
LC_COLLATE
This variable determines the locale category for character collation information.
LC_CTYPE
This variable determines the locale category for character handling functions. It
determines the character classes for pattern matching (see Pathname Expansion below).
LC_NUMERIC
This variable determines the locale category for the decimal point character.
MAIL If this variable is set to the name of a mail file and the MAILPATH variable is not set,
then the shell informs the user of arrival of mail in the specified file.
MAILCHECK
This variable specifies how often (in seconds) the shell will check for changes in the
modification time of any of the files specified by the MAILPATH or MAIL variables. The
default value is 600 seconds. When the time has elapsed the shell will check before
issuing the next prompt.
MAILPATH
A colon ( : ) separated list of file names. If this variable is set, then the shell
informs the user of any modifications to the specified files that have occurred within the
last MAILCHECK seconds. Each file name can be followed by a ? and a message that will be
printed. The message will undergo parameter expansion, command substitution, and
arithmetic expansion with the variable $_ defined as the name of the file that has changed.
The default message is you have mail in $_.
PATH The search path for commands (see Execution below). The user may not change PATH if
executing under rksh (except in .profile).
PS1 Every time a new command line is started on an interactive shell, the value of this
variable is expanded to resolve backslash escaping, parameter expansion, command
substitution, and arithmetic expansion. The result defines the primary prompt string for
that command line. The default is ``$ ''. The character ! in the primary prompt string
is replaced by the command number (see Command Re-entry below). Two successive occurrences
of ! will produce a single ! when the prompt string is printed. Note that any terminal
escape sequences used in the PS1 prompt thus need every instance of ! in them to be
changed to !!.
PS2 Secondary prompt string, by default ``> ''.
PS3 Selection prompt string used within a select loop, by default ``#? ''.
PS4 The value of this variable is expanded for parameter evaluation, command substitution, and
arithmetic expansion and precedes each line of an execution trace. By default, PS4 is ``+
''. In addition when PS4 is unset, the execution trace prompt is also ``+ ''.
SHELL The pathname of the shell is kept in the environment. At invocation, if the basename of
this variable is rsh, rksh, or krsh, then the shell becomes restricted.
TIMEFORMAT
The value of this parameter is used as a format string specifying how the timing
information for pipelines prefixed with the time reserved word should be displayed. The %
character introduces a format sequence that is expanded to a time value or other
information. The format sequences and their meanings are as follows.
%% A literal %.
%[p][l]R The elapsed time in seconds.
%[p][l]U The number of CPU seconds spent in user mode.
%[p][l]S The number of CPU seconds spent in system mode.
%P The CPU percentage, computed as (U + S) / R.
The brackets denote optional portions. The optional p is a digit specifying the precision,
the number of fractional digits after a decimal point. A value of 0 causes no decimal
point or fraction to be output. At most three places after the decimal point can be
displayed; values of p greater than 3 are treated as 3. If p is not specified, the value 3
is used.
The optional l specifies a longer format, including hours if greater than zero, minutes,
and seconds of the form HHhMMmSS.FFs. The value of p determines whether or not the
fraction is included. Seconds are zero-padded unless the posix shell option is on.
All other characters are output without change and a trailing newline is added. If the
variable is unset, the default value, $'\nreal\t%2lR\nuser\t%2lU\nsys\t%2lS', is used. If
the value is empty, no timing information is displayed.
TMOUT Terminal read timeout. If set to a value greater than zero, the read built-in command and
the select compound command time out after TMOUT seconds when input is from a terminal. An
interactive shell will issue a warning and allow for an extra 60 second timeout grace
period before terminating if a line is not entered within the prescribed number of seconds
while reading from a terminal. (Note that the shell can be compiled with a maximum bound
for this value which cannot be exceeded.)
VISUAL The value of this variable is scanned when the shell is invoked and whenever its value is
changed; if it is found to match certain patterns, the corresponding line editor (see In-
line Editing Options below) is activated. If it matches the pattern *[Vv][Ii]*, the vi
option is turned on; else if it matches the pattern *gmacs*, the gmacs option is turned on;
else if it matches the pattern *macs*, the emacs option is turned on. If none of the
patterns match, emacs is turned on by default upon initializing an interactive shell. If
the value is changed by assignment and none of the patterns match, no options are changed.
The value of VISUAL overrides the value of EDITOR.
The shell gives default values to PATH, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, MAILCHECK, FCEDIT, TMOUT and IFS, while HOME,
SHELL, ENV, histchars, and MAIL are not set at all by the shell (although HOME is set by login(1)). On
some systems MAIL and SHELL are also set by login(1).
Field Splitting.
After parameter expansion and command substitution, the results of substitutions are scanned for the
field separator characters (those found in IFS) and split into distinct fields where such characters are
found. Explicit empty fields ("" or ′′) are retained. Implicit empty fields (those resulting from
parameters that are unset or have empty string values or from command substitutions yielding the empty
string, and that are not quoted with "") are removed.
Brace Expansion.
If the braceexpand (-B) option is set then each word, as well as any fields resulting from field
splitting (see above), are checked to see if they contain one or more of the brace patterns {*,*},
{l1..l2} , {n1..n2} , {n1..n2% fmt} , {n1..n2 ..n3} , or {n1..n2 ..n3%fmt} , where * represents any
character, l1,l2 are letters and n1,n2,n3 are signed numbers and fmt is a format specified as used by
printf. In each case, fields are created by prepending the characters before the { and appending the
characters after the } to each of the strings generated by the characters between the { and }. The
resulting fields are checked to see if they have any brace patterns.
In the first form, a field is created for each string between { and ,, between , and ,, and between , and
}. The string represented by * can contain embedded matching { and } without quoting. Otherwise, each {
and } with * must be quoted.
In the seconds form, l1 and l2 must both be either upper case or both be lower case characters in the C
locale. In this case a field is created for each character from l1 through l2.
In the remaining forms, a field is created for each number starting at n1 and continuing until it reaches
n2 incrementing n1 by n3. The cases where n3 is not specified behave as if n3 where 1 if n1<=n2 and -1
otherwise. If forms which specify %fmt any format flags, widths and precisions can be specified and fmt
can end in any of the specifiers cdiouxX. For example, {a,z}{1..5..3%02d}{b..c}x expands to the 8
fields, a01bx, a01cx, a04bx, a04cx, z01bx, z01cx, z04bx and z04cx.
Pathname Expansion.
This is also known as globbing or sometimes filename generation. Pathname expansion is disabled if the
-f a.k.a. --noglob shell option is on. Otherwise, if certain special characters are found in a word or
in a field resulting from field splitting (see above), then the word or field is regarded as a pattern.
Each literal word is scanned for the characters *, ?, [, and (, but fields resulting from field splitting
are scanned only for the characters *, ?, and [ for compatibility reasons (in which case the ( character
is not special and any pattern syntax described below that involves parentheses does not apply).
Each file name component that contains a recognized pattern character is replaced with a
lexicographically sorted set of names that matches the pattern from that directory. If no file name is
found that matches the pattern, then that component of the filename is left unchanged unless the pattern
is prefixed with ∼(N), in which case it is removed as described below. The special traversal names .
and .. are never matched. If FIGNORE is set, then each file name component that matches the pattern
defined by the value of FIGNORE is ignored when generating the matching filenames. If FIGNORE is not
set, the character . at the start of each file name component will be ignored unless the first character
of the pattern corresponding to this component is the character . itself. Note that, for uses of
pattern matching other than pathname expansion, the / and . are not treated specially.
* Matches any string, including the empty string. When used for filename expansion, if the
globstar option is on, an isolated pattern of two adjacent *s will match all files and zero
or more directories and subdirectories. If followed by a / then only directories and
subdirectories will match.
? Matches any single character.
[...] Matches any one of the enclosed characters. A pair of characters separated by - matches
any character lexically between the pair, inclusive. If the first character following the
opening [ is a ! or ^, then any character not enclosed is matched. A - can be included in
the character set by putting it as the first or last character.
Within [ and ], character classes can be specified with the syntax [:class:], where class
is one of the following classes defined in the ANSI C standard (note that word is
equivalent to alnum plus the character _):
alnum alpha blank cntrl digit graph lower print punct space upper word xdigit
Within [ and ], an equivalence class can be specified with the syntax [=c=] which matches
all characters with the same primary collation weight (as defined by the current locale) as
the character c. Within [ and ], [.symbol.] matches the collating symbol symbol.
A pattern-list is a list of one or more patterns separated from each other with a & or |. A & signifies
that all patterns must be matched whereas | requires that only one pattern be matched. Composite
patterns can be formed with one or more of the following subpatterns:
?(pattern-list)
Optionally matches any one of the given patterns.
*(pattern-list)
Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns.
+(pattern-list)
Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns.
{n}(pattern-list)
Matches n occurrences of the given patterns.
{m,n}(pattern-list)
Matches from m to n occurrences of the given patterns. If m is omitted, 0 will be used.
If n is omitted, at least m occurrences will be matched.
@(pattern-list)
Matches exactly one of the given patterns.
!(pattern-list)
Matches anything except one of the given patterns.
By default, each pattern or subpattern will match the longest string possible consistent with generating
the longest overall match. If more than one match is possible, the one starting closest to the beginning
of the string will be chosen. However, for each of the above compound patterns, a - can be inserted in
front of the ( to cause the shortest match to the specified pattern-list to be used.
When pattern-list is contained within parentheses, the backslash character \ is treated specially even
when inside a character class. All ANSI C character escapes are recognized and match the specified
character. In addition, the following escape sequences are recognized:
\d Matches any character in the digit class.
\D Matches any character not in the digit class.
\s Matches any character in the space class.
\S Matches any character not in the space class.
\w Matches any character in the word class.
\W Matches any character not in the word class.
A pattern of the form %(pattern-pair(s)) is a subpattern that can be used to match nested character
expressions. Each pattern-pair is a two-character sequence that cannot contain & or |. The first
pattern-pair specifies the starting and ending characters for the match. Each subsequent pattern-pair
represents the beginning and ending characters of a nested group that will be skipped over when counting
starting and ending character matches. The behavior is unspecified when the first character of a
pattern-pair is alphanumeric, except for the following:
D Causes the ending character to terminate the search for this pattern without finding a
match.
E Causes the ending character to be interpreted as an escape character.
L Causes the ending character to be interpreted as a quote character, causing all characters
to be ignored when looking for a match.
Q Causes the ending character to be interpreted as a quote character, causing all characters
other than any escape character to be ignored when looking for a match.
Thus, %({}Q"E\), matches characters starting at { until the matching } is found, not counting any { or }
that is inside a double-quoted string or preceded by the escape character \. Without the {}, this
pattern matches any C language string.
Each subpattern in a composite pattern is numbered, starting at 1, by the location of the ( within the
pattern. The sequence \n, where n is a single digit and \n comes after the nth subpattern, matches the
same string as the subpattern itself.
Finally, a pattern can contain subpatterns of the form ∼(options:pattern-list), where either options or
:pattern-list can be omitted. Unlike the other compound patterns, these subpatterns are not counted in
the numbered subpatterns. :pattern-list must be omitted for options E, F, G, N, P, V, and X below. If
options is present, it can consist of one or more of the following:
+ Enable the following options. This is the default.
- Disable the following options.
E The remainder of the pattern uses extended regular expression syntax like the -E option of
the grep(1) command.
F The remainder of the pattern uses the fixed pattern syntax of the -F option of the grep(1)
command.
G The remainder of the pattern uses basic regular expression syntax like the grep(1) command
without options.
K The remainder of the pattern uses shell pattern syntax. This is the default.
N When it is the first letter and is used with pathname expansion, and no matches occur, the
file pattern expands to the empty string instead of remaining unexpanded. Otherwise, it is
ignored.
X The remainder of the pattern uses augmented regular expression syntax like the -X option of
the AT&T AST version of the grep(1) command.
P The remainder of the pattern uses perl(1) regular expression syntax. Not all perl regular
expression syntax is currently implemented.
V The remainder of the pattern uses System V regular expression syntax.
i Always treat the match as case-insensitive, regardless of the globcasedetect shell option.
g File the longest match (greedy). This is the default.
l Left-anchor the pattern. This is the default for K style patterns.
r Right-anchor the pattern. This is the default for K style patterns.
If both options and :pattern-list are specified, then the options apply only to pattern-list.
Otherwise, these options remain in effect until they are disabled by a subsequent ∼(...) or at the end of
the subpattern containing ∼(...).
Quoting.
Each of the metacharacters listed earlier (see Definitions above) has a special meaning to the shell and
causes termination of a word unless quoted. A character may be quoted (i.e., made to stand for itself)
by preceding it with a \. The pair \new-line is removed. All characters enclosed between a pair of
single quote marks (′′) that is not preceded by a $ are quoted. A single quote cannot appear within the
single quotes. A single quoted string preceded by an unquoted $ is processed as an ANSI C string except
for the following:
\0 Causes the remainder of the string to be ignored.
\E Equivalent to the escape character (ASCII 033),
\e Equivalent to the escape character (ASCII 033),
\cx Expands to the character control-x.
\C[.name.]
Expands to the collating element name.
Inside double quote marks (""), parameter and command substitution occur and \ quotes the characters \,
`, ", and $. A $ in front of a double quoted string will be ignored in the "C" or "POSIX" locale, and
may cause the string to be replaced by a locale specific string otherwise. The meaning of $* and $@ is
identical when not quoted or when used as a variable assignment value or as a file name. However, when
used as a command argument, "$*" is equivalent to "$1d$2d...", where d is the first character of the IFS
variable, whereas "$@" is equivalent to "$1" "$2" .... Inside grave quote marks (``), \ quotes the
characters \, `, and $. If the grave quotes occur within double quotes, then \ also quotes the character
".
The special meaning of reserved words or aliases can be removed by quoting any character of the reserved
word. The recognition of function names or built-in command names listed below cannot be altered by
quoting them.
Arithmetic Evaluation.
The shell performs arithmetic evaluation for arithmetic expansion, to evaluate an arithmetic command, to
evaluate an indexed array subscript, and to evaluate arguments to the built-in commands shift and let as
well as arguments to numeric format specifiers given to print -f and printf. Evaluations are performed
using double precision floating point arithmetic or long double precision floating point for systems that
provide this data type. Floating point constants follow the ANSI C programming language floating point
conventions. The case-insensitive floating point constants NaN and Inf can be used to represent "not a
number" and infinity respectively, unless the posix shell option is on. Integer constants follow the
ANSI C programming language integer constant conventions although only single byte character constants
are recognized and character casts are not recognized. In addition constants can be of the form [base#]n
where base is a decimal number between two and sixty-four representing the arithmetic base and n is a
number in that base. The digits above 9 are represented by the lower case letters, the upper case
letters, @, and _ respectively. For bases less than or equal to 36, upper and lower case characters can
be used interchangeably.
An arithmetic expression uses the same syntax, precedence, and associativity of expression as the C
language. All the C language operators that apply to floating point quantities can be used. In
addition, the operator ** can be used for exponentiation. It has higher precedence than multiplication
and is left associative. In addition, when the value of an arithmetic variable or subexpression can be
represented as a long integer, all C language integer arithmetic operations can be performed. Variables
can be referenced by name within an arithmetic expression without using the parameter expansion syntax.
When a variable is referenced, its value is evaluated as an arithmetic expression.
Any of the following math library functions that are in the C math library can be used within an
arithmetic expression:
abs acos acosh asin asinh atan atan2 atanh cbrt ceil copysign cos cosh erf erfc exp exp10 exp2 expm1 fabs
fdim finite float floor fma fmax fmin fmod fpclass fpclassify hypot ilogb int isfinite isgreater
isgreaterequal isinf isinfinite isless islessequal islessgreater isnan isnormal issubnormal isunordered
iszero j0 j1 jn ldexp lgamma log log10 log1p log2 logb nearbyint nextafter nexttoward pow remainder rint
round scalb scalbn signbit sin sinh sqrt tan tanh tgamma trunc y0 y1 yn
In addition, arithmetic functions can be defined as shell functions with a variant of the function name
syntax,
function .sh.math.name ident ... { list ;}
where name is the function name used in the arithmetic expression and each identifier, ident is a
name reference to the long double precision floating point argument. The value of .sh.value when
the function returns is the value of this function. User defined functions can take up to 3
arguments and override C math library functions.
An internal representation of a variable as a double precision floating point can be specified with the
-E [n], -F [n], or -X [n] option of the typeset special built-in command. The -E option causes the
expansion of the value to be represented using scientific notation when it is expanded. The optional
option argument n defines the number of significant figures. The -F option causes the expansion to be
represented as a floating decimal number when it is expanded. The -X option causes the expansion to be
represented using the %a format defined by ISO C-99. The optional option argument n defines the number
of places after the decimal (or radix) point in this case.
An internal integer representation of a variable can be specified with the -i [n] option of the typeset
special built-in command. The optional option argument n specifies an arithmetic base to be used when
expanding the variable. If you do not specify an arithmetic base, base 10 will be used.
Arithmetic evaluation is performed on the value of each assignment to a variable with the -E, -F, -X, or
-i attribute. Assigning a floating point number to a variable whose type is an integer causes the
fractional part to be truncated.
Prompting.
When used interactively, the shell prompts with the value of PS1 after expanding it for parameter
expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion, before reading a command. In addition, each
single ! in the prompt is replaced by the command number. A !! is required to place ! in the prompt.
If at any time a new-line is typed and further input is needed to complete a command, then the secondary
prompt (i.e., the value of PS2) is issued.
Conditional Expressions.
A conditional expression is used with the [[ compound command to test attributes of files and to compare
strings. Field splitting and pathname expansion are not performed on the words between [[ and ]]. Each
expression can be constructed from one or more of the following unary or binary expressions:
string Same as -n string below.
-a file
Same as -e below. This is obsolete.
-b file
True if file exists and is a block special file.
-c file
True if file exists and is a character special file.
-d file
True if file exists and is a directory.
-e file
True if file exists.
-f file
True if file exists and is an ordinary file.
-g file
True if file exists and it has its setgid bit set.
-k file
True if file exists and it has its sticky bit set.
-n string
True if length of string is non-zero.
-o ?option
True if option named option is a valid option name.
-o option
True if option named option is on.
-p file
True if file exists and is a fifo special file or a pipe.
-r file
True if file exists and is readable by current process.
-s file
True if file exists and has size greater than zero.
-t fildes
True if file descriptor number fildes is open and associated with a terminal device.
-u file
True if file exists and it has its setuid bit set.
-v name
True if variable name is a valid variable name and is set.
-w file
True if file exists and is writable by current process.
-x file
True if file exists and is executable by current process. If file exists and is a
directory, then true if the current process has permission to search in the directory.
-z string
True if length of string is zero.
-L file
True if file exists and is a symbolic link.
-h file
True if file exists and is a symbolic link.
-N file
True if file exists and the modification time is greater than the last access time.
-O file
True if file exists and is owned by the effective user ID of this process.
-G file
True if file exists and its group matches the effective group ID of this process.
-R name
True if variable name is a name reference.
-S file
True if file exists and is a socket.
file1 -nt file2
True if file1 exists and file2 does not, or file1 is newer than file2.
file1 -ot file2
True if file2 exists and file1 does not, or file1 is older than file2.
file1 -ef file2
True if file1 and file2 exist and refer to the same file.
string == pattern
True if string matches pattern. Any part of pattern can be quoted to cause it to be
matched as a string. With a successful match to a pattern, the .sh.match array variable
will contain the match and subpattern matches.
string = pattern
Same as == above, but is obsolete.
string != pattern
True if string does not match pattern. When the string matches the pattern the .sh.match
array variable will contain the match and subpattern matches.
string =∼ ere
True if string matches the pattern ∼(E)ere where ere is an extended regular expression.
string1 < string2
True if string1 comes before string2 based on ASCII value of their characters.
string1 > string2
True if string1 comes after string2 based on ASCII value of their characters.
The following obsolete arithmetic comparisons are also permitted:
exp1 -eq exp2
True if exp1 is equal to exp2.
exp1 -ne exp2
True if exp1 is not equal to exp2.
exp1 -lt exp2
True if exp1 is less than exp2.
exp1 -gt exp2
True if exp1 is greater than exp2.
exp1 -le exp2
True if exp1 is less than or equal to exp2.
exp1 -ge exp2
True if exp1 is greater than or equal to exp2.
In each of the above expressions, if file is of the form /dev/fd/n, where n is an integer, then the test
is applied to the open file whose descriptor number is n. The posix shell option disables this special
handling.
A compound expression can be constructed from these primitives by using any of the following, listed in
decreasing order of precedence:
(expression)
True if expression is true. Used to group expressions.
! expression
True if expression is false.
expression1 && expression2
True if expression1 and expression2 are both true.
expression1 || expression2
True if either expression1 or expression2 is true.
Input/Output.
Before a command is executed, its input and output may be redirected using a special notation interpreted
by the shell. The following may appear anywhere in a simple-command or may precede or follow a command
and are not passed on to the invoked command. Command substitution, parameter expansion, and arithmetic
expansion occur before word or digit is used except as noted below. Pathname expansion occurs only if
the shell is interactive and the pattern matches a single file. Field splitting is not performed.
In each of the following redirections, if file is of the form /dev/sctp/host/port, /dev/tcp/host/port, or
/dev/udp/host/port, where host is a hostname or host address, and port is a service given by name or an
integer port number, then the redirection attempts to make a tcp, sctp or udp connection to the
corresponding socket.
No intervening space is allowed between the characters of redirection operators.
<word Use file word as standard input (file descriptor 0).
>word Use file word as standard output (file descriptor 1). If the file does not exist then it
is created. If the file exists, and the noclobber option is on, this causes an error;
otherwise, it is truncated to zero length.
>|word Same as >, except that it overrides the noclobber option.
>;word Write output to a temporary file. If the command completes successfully rename it to word,
otherwise, delete the temporary file. >;word cannot be used with the exec and redirect
built-ins.
>>word Use file word as standard output. If the file exists, then output is appended to it (by
first seeking to the end-of-file); otherwise, the file is created.
<>word Open file word for reading and writing as standard output. If the posix option is active,
it defaults to standard input instead.
<>;word The same as <>word except that if the command completes successfully, word is truncated to
the offset at command completion. <>;word cannot be used with the exec and redirect built-
ins.
<<[-]word The shell input is read up to a line that is the same as word after any quoting has been
removed, or to an end-of-file. No parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic
expansion or pathname expansion is performed on word. The resulting document, called a
here-document, becomes the standard input. If any character of word is quoted, then no
interpretation is placed upon the characters of the document; otherwise, parameter
expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion occur, \new-line is ignored, and
\ must be used to quote the characters \, $, `. If - is appended to <<, then all leading
tabs are stripped from word and from the document. If # is appended to <<, then leading
spaces and tabs will be stripped off the first line of the document and up to an equivalent
indentation will be stripped from the remaining lines and from word. A tab stop is assumed
to occur at every 8 columns for the purposes of determining the indentation.
<<<word A short form of here document in which word becomes the contents of the here-document after
any parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion occur.
<&digit The standard input is duplicated from file descriptor digit (see dup(2)).
>&digit The standard output is duplicated from file descriptor digit.
<&digit- The file descriptor given by digit is moved to standard input.
>&digit- The file descriptor given by digit is moved to standard output.
<&- The standard input is closed.
>&- The standard output is closed.
<&p The input from the co-process is moved to standard input.
>&p The output to the co-process is moved to standard output.
<#((expr)) Evaluate arithmetic expression expr and position file descriptor 0 to the resulting value
bytes from the start of the file. The variables CUR and EOF evaluate to the current offset
and end-of-file offset respectively when evaluating expr.
>#((offset)) The same as <# except applies to file descriptor 1.
<#pattern Seeks forward to the beginning of the next line containing pattern.
<##pattern The same as <# except that the portion of the file that is skipped is copied to standard
output.
If one of the above is preceded by a digit, with no intervening space, then the file descriptor number
referred to is that specified by the digit (instead of the default 0 or 1). If one of the above, other
than >&- and the ># and <# forms, is preceded by {varname} with no intervening space, then a file
descriptor number > 9 will be selected by the shell and stored in the variable varname, so it can be read
from or written to with redirections like <& $varname or >& $varname. If >&- or the any of the ># and <#
forms is preceded by {varname} the value of varname defines the file descriptor to close or position.
For example:
... 2>&1
means file descriptor 2 is to be opened for writing as a duplicate of file descriptor 1 and
exec {n}<file
means open file named file for reading and store the file descriptor number in variable n.
A special shorthand redirection operator &>word is available; it is equivalent to >word 2>&1. It cannot
be preceded by any digit or variable name. This shorthand is disabled if the posix shell option is
active.
The order in which redirections are specified is significant. The shell evaluates each redirection in
terms of the (file descriptor, file) association at the time of evaluation. For example:
... 1>fname 2>&1
first associates file descriptor 1 with file fname. It then associates file descriptor 2 with the file
associated with file descriptor 1 (i.e. fname). If the order of redirections were reversed, file
descriptor 2 would be associated with the terminal (assuming file descriptor 1 had been) and then file
descriptor 1 would be associated with file fname.
If a command is followed by & and job control is not active, then the default standard input for the
command is the empty file /dev/null. Otherwise, the environment for the execution of a command contains
the file descriptors of the invoking shell as modified by input/output specifications.
Environment.
The environment (see environ(7)) is a list of name-value pairs that is passed to an executed program in
the same way as a normal argument list. The names must be identifiers and the values are character
strings. The shell interacts with the environment in several ways. On invocation, the shell scans the
environment and creates a variable for each name found, giving it the corresponding value and attributes
and marking it export. Executed commands inherit the environment. If the user modifies the values of
these variables or creates new ones, using the export or typeset -x commands, they become part of the
environment. The environment seen by any executed command is thus composed of any name-value pairs
originally inherited by the shell, whose values may be modified by the current shell, plus any additions
which must be noted in export or typeset -x commands.
The environment for any simple-command or function may be augmented by prefixing it with one or more
variable assignments. A variable assignment argument is a word of the form identifier=value. Thus:
TERM=450 cmd args and
(export TERM; TERM=450; cmd args)
are equivalent (as far as the above execution of cmd is concerned except for special built-in commands
listed below - those that are marked with †).
If the obsolete -k option is set, all variable assignment arguments are placed in the environment, even
if they occur after the command name. The following first prints a=b c and then c:
echo a=b c
set -k
echo a=b c
This feature is intended for use with scripts written for early versions of the shell and its use in new
scripts is strongly discouraged. It is likely to disappear someday.
Functions.
For historical reasons, there are two ways to define functions, the name() syntax and the function name
syntax, described in the Commands section above. Shell functions are read in and stored internally.
Alias names are resolved when the function is read. Functions are executed like commands with the
arguments passed as positional parameters. (See Execution below.)
Functions defined by the function name syntax and called by name execute in the same process as the
caller and share all files and present working directory with the caller. Traps caught by the caller are
reset to their default action inside the function. A trap condition that is not caught or ignored by the
function causes the function to terminate and the condition to be passed on to the caller. A trap on
EXIT set inside a function is executed in the environment of the caller after the function completes.
Ordinarily, variables are shared between the calling program and the function. However, the typeset
special built-in command used within a function defines local variables whose scope includes the current
function. They can be passed to functions that they call in the variable assignment list that precedes
the call or as arguments passed as name references. Errors within functions return control to the
caller.
Functions defined with the name() syntax and functions defined with the function name syntax that are
invoked with the . special built-in are executed in the caller's environment and share all variables and
traps with the caller. Errors within these function executions cause the script that contains them to
abort.
The special built-in command return is used to return from function calls.
Function names can be listed with the -f or +f option of the typeset special built-in command. The text
of functions, when available, will also be listed with -f. Functions can be undefined with the -f option
of the unset special built-in command.
Ordinarily, functions are unset when the shell executes a shell script. Functions that need to be
defined across separate invocations of the shell should be placed in a directory and the FPATH variable
should contain the name of this directory. They may also be specified in the ENV file.
Discipline Functions.
Each variable can have zero or more discipline functions associated with it. The shell initially
understands the discipline names get, set, append, and unset but can be added when defining new types.
On most systems others can be added at run time via the C programming interface extension provided by the
builtin built-in utility. If the get discipline is defined for a variable, it is invoked whenever the
given variable is referenced. If the variable .sh.value is assigned a value inside the discipline
function, the referenced variable will evaluate to this value instead. If the set discipline is defined
for a variable, it is invoked whenever the given variable is assigned a value. If the append discipline
is defined for a variable, it is invoked whenever a value is appended to the given variable. The
variable .sh.value is given the value of the variable before invoking the discipline, and the variable
will be assigned the value of .sh.value after the discipline completes. If .sh.value is unset inside the
discipline, then that value is unchanged. If the unset discipline is defined for a variable, it is
invoked whenever the given variable is unset.
The variable .sh.name contains the name of the variable for which the discipline function is called,
.sh.subscript is the subscript of the variable, and .sh.value will contain the value being assigned
inside the set discipline function. The variable _ is a reference to the variable including the
subscript if any. For the set discipline, changing .sh.value will change the value that gets assigned.
Finally, the expansion ${var.name}, when name is the name of a discipline, and there is no variable of
this name, is equivalent to the command substitution ${ var.name;}.
Name Spaces.
Commands and functions that are executed as part of the list of a namespace command that modify variables
or create new ones, create a new variable whose name is the name of the name space as given by identifier
preceded by .. When a variable whose name is name is referenced, it is first searched for using
.identifier.name. Similarly, a function defined by a command in the namespace list is created using the
name space name preceded by a ..
When the list of a namespace command contains a namespace command, the names of variables and functions
that are created consist of the variable or function name preceded by the list of identifiers each
preceded by ..
Outside of a name space, a variable or function created inside a name space can be referenced by
preceding it with the name space name.
By default, variables starting with .sh are in the sh name space.
Type Variables.
Typed variables provide a way to create data structure and objects. A type can be defined either by a
shared library, by the enum built-in command described below, or by using the new -T option of the
typeset built-in command. With the -T option of typeset, the type name, specified as an option argument
to -T, is set with a compound variable assignment that defines the type. Function definitions can appear
inside the compound variable assignment and these become discipline functions for this type and can be
invoked or redefined by each instance of the type. The function name create is treated specially. It is
invoked for each instance of the type that is created but is not inherited and cannot be redefined for
each instance.
When a type is defined a special built-in command of that name is added. These built-ins are declaration
commands and follow the same expansion rules as the built-in commands described below that are marked
with a ‡ symbol. These commands can subsequently be used inside further type definitions. The man page
for these commands can be generated by using the --man option or any of the other -- options described
with getopts. The -r, -a, -A, -h, and -S options of typeset are permitted with each of these new built-
ins.
An instance of a type is created by invoking the type name followed by one or more instance names. Each
instance of the type is initialized with a copy of the subvariables except for subvariables that are
defined with the -S option. Variables defined with the -S are shared by all instances of the type. Each
instance can change the value of any subvariable and can also define new discipline functions of the same
names as those defined by the type definition as well as any standard discipline names. No additional
subvariables can be defined for any instance.
When defining a type, if the value of a subvariable is not set and the -r attribute is specified, it
causes the subvariable to be a required subvariable. Whenever an instance of a type is created, all
required subvariables must be specified. These subvariables become read-only in each instance.
When unset is invoked on a subvariable within a type, and the -r attribute has not been specified for
this field, the value is reset to the default value associative with the type. Invoking unset on a type
instance not contained within another type deletes all subvariables and the variable itself.
A type definition can be derived from another type definition by defining the first subvariable name as _
and defining its type as the base type. Any remaining definitions will be additions and modifications
that apply to the new type. If the new type name is the same as that of the base type, the type will be
replaced and the original type will no longer be accessible.
The typeset command with the -T and no option argument or operands will write all the type definitions to
standard output in a form that can be read in to create all they types.
Jobs.
If the monitor option of the set command is turned on, an interactive shell associates a job with each
pipeline. It keeps a table of current jobs, printed by the jobs command, and assigns them small integer
numbers. When a job is started asynchronously with &, the shell prints a line which looks like:
[1] 1234
indicating that the job which was started asynchronously was job number 1 and had one (top-level)
process, whose process ID was 1234.
This paragraph and the next require features that are not in all versions of UNIX and may not apply. If
you are running a job and wish to do something else you may hit the key ^Z (control-Z) which sends a STOP
signal to the current job. The shell will then normally indicate that the job has been `Stopped', and
print another prompt. You can then manipulate the state of this job, putting it in the background with
the bg command, or run some other commands and then eventually bring the job back into the foreground
with the foreground command fg. A ^Z takes effect immediately and is like an interrupt in that pending
output and unread input are discarded when it is typed.
A job being run in the background will stop if it tries to read from the terminal. Background jobs are
normally allowed to produce output, but this can be disabled by giving the command stty tostop. If you
set this tty option, then background jobs will stop when they try to produce output like they do when
they try to read input.
There are several ways to refer to jobs in the shell. A job can be referred to by the process ID of any
process of the job or by one of the following:
%number
The job with the given number.
%string
Any job whose command line begins with string.
%?string
Any job whose command line contains string.
%% Current job.
%+ Equivalent to %%.
%- Previous job.
The shell learns immediately whenever a process changes state. It normally informs you whenever a job
becomes blocked so that no further progress is possible, but only just before it prints a prompt. This
is done so that it does not otherwise disturb your work. The notify option of the set command causes the
shell to print these job change messages as soon as they occur.
When the monitor option is on, each background job that completes triggers any trap set for CHLD.
When you try to leave the shell while jobs are running or stopped, you will be warned that `You have
stopped(running) jobs.' You may use the jobs command to see what they are. If you immediately try to
exit again, the shell will not warn you a second time, and the stopped jobs will be terminated. When a
login shell receives a HUP signal, it sends a HUP signal to each job that has not been disowned with the
disown built-in command described below.
Signals.
The INT and QUIT signals for an invoked command are ignored if the command is followed by & and the
monitor option is not active. Otherwise, signals have the values inherited by the shell from its parent
(but see also the trap built-in command below).
Execution.
Each time a command is read, the above expansions and substitutions are carried out. If the command name
matches one of the Special Built-in Commands listed below, it is executed within the current shell
process. Next, the command name is checked to see if it matches a user defined function. If it does,
the positional parameters are saved and then reset to the arguments of the function call. A function is
also executed in the current shell process. When the function completes or issues a return, the
positional parameter list is restored. For functions defined with the function name syntax, any trap set
on EXIT within the function is executed. The exit value of a function is the value of the last command
executed. If a command name is not a special built-in command or a user defined function, but it is one
of the built-in commands listed below, it is executed in the current shell process.
The shell variables PATH followed by the variable FPATH defines the list of directories to search for the
command name. Alternative directory names are separated by a colon (:). The default path is the value
that was output by getconf PATH at the time ksh was compiled. The current directory can be specified by
two or more adjacent colons, or by a colon at the beginning or end of the path list. If the command name
contains a /, then the search path is not used. Otherwise, each directory in the list of directories
defined by PATH and FPATH is checked in order. If the directory being searched is contained in FPATH and
contains a file whose name matches the command being searched, then this file is loaded into the current
shell environment as if it were the argument to the . command except that only preset aliases are
expanded, and a function of the given name is executed as described above.
If this directory is not in FPATH the shell first determines whether there is a built-in version of a
command corresponding to a given pathname and if so it is invoked in the current process. If no built-in
is found, the shell checks for a file named .paths in this directory. If found and there is a line of
the form FPATH=path where path names an existing directory then that directory is searched immediately
after the current directory as if it were found in the FPATH variable. If path does not begin with /, it
is checked for relative to the directory being searched.
The .paths file is then checked for a line of the form PLUGIN_LIB=libname [ : libname ] ... . Each
library named by libname will be searched for as if it were an option argument to builtin -f, and if it
contains a built-in of the specified name this will be executed instead of a command by this name. Any
built-in loaded from a library found this way will be associated with the directory containing the .paths
file so it will only execute if not found in an earlier directory.
Finally, the directory will be checked for a file of the given name. If the file has execute permission
but is not an a.out file, it is assumed to be a file containing shell commands. A separate shell is
spawned to read it. All non-exported variables are removed in this case. If the shell command file
doesn't have read permission, or if the setuid and/or setgid bits are set on the file, then the shell
executes an agent whose job it is to set up the permissions and execute the shell with the shell command
file passed down as an open file. If the .paths contains a line of the form name=value in the first or
second line, then the environment variable name is modified by prepending the directory specified by
value to the directory list. If value is not an absolute directory, then it specifies a directory
relative to the directory that the executable was found. If the environment variable name does not
already exist it will be added to the environment list for the specified command. A parenthesized
command is executed in a subshell without removing non-exported variables.
Command Re-entry.
The text of the last HISTSIZE (default 512) commands entered from a terminal device is saved in a history
file. The file $HOME/.sh_history is used if the HISTFILE variable is not set or if the file it names is
not writable. A shell can access the commands of all interactive shells which use the same named
HISTFILE. The built-in command hist is used to list or edit a portion of this file. The portion of the
file to be edited or listed can be selected by number or by giving the first character or characters of
the command. A single command or range of commands can be specified. If you do not specify an editor
program as an argument to hist then the value of the variable HISTEDIT is used. If HISTEDIT is unset,
the obsolete variable FCEDIT is used. If FCEDIT is not defined, then /bin/ed is used. The edited
command(s) is printed and re-executed upon leaving the editor unless you quit without writing. The -s
option (and in obsolete versions, the editor name -) is used to skip the editing phase and to re-execute
the command. In this case a substitution parameter of the form old=new can be used to modify the command
before execution. For example, with the preset alias r, which is aliased to ′hist -s′, typing `r
bad=good c' will re-execute the most recent command which starts with the letter c, replacing the first
occurrence of the string bad with the string good.
History Expansion.
History expansions introduce words from the history list into the input stream, making it easy to repeat
commands, repeat arguments of a previous command in the current command, or fix typos in the previous
command. The history expansion facility is an alternative to history control via the fc or hist built-in
command. To enable it, turn on the -H or histexpand option using the set command (see Built-in Commands
below).
History expansions begin with the character !. They may begin anywhere in the input. The ! may be
preceded by a \ or enclosed in single quotes to prevent its special meaning. A ! is also passed
unchanged when it is followed by a space, tab, newline, = or (. History expansions do not nest. They
are parsed separately before the shell parser is invoked, so they can override shell grammar rules.
By default, the expanded version of any line that contains a history expansion is printed, added to the
history, and then immediately executed. History expansions are never added to the history themselves,
regardless of whether they succeed or fail due to an error. Normally, this means that a command line
with an erroneous history expansion is lost and needs to be retyped from scratch, but if the histreedit
shell option is turned on and a line editor is active (see In-line Editing Options below), the erroneous
line is pre-filled into the next prompt's input buffer for correcting. The histverify option causes the
same to be done for the results of successful history expansions, allowing verification and editing
before execution.
A history expansion may have an event specification, which indicates the event from which words are to be
taken, a word designator, which selects particular words from the chosen event, and/or a modifier, which
manipulates the selected words.
An event specification can be:
n A number, referring to a particular event.
-n An offset, referring to the event n before the current event.
# The current event.
! The previous event (equivalent to -1).
s The most recent event whose first word begins with the string s.
?s? The most recent event which contains the string s. The second ? can be omitted if it is
immediately followed by a newline.
For example, consider this bit of someone's history list as might be output by the hist -l command:
9 nroff -man wumpus.man
10 cp wumpus.man wumpus.man.old
11 vi wumpus.man
12 diff wumpus.man.old wumpus.man
The commands are shown with their event numbers. The current event, which we haven't typed in yet, is
event 13. !11 and !-2 refer to event 11. !! refers to the previous event, 12. !! can be abbreviated !
if it is followed by : (see below). !n refers to event 9, which begins with n. !?old? also refers to
event 12, which contains old. Without word designators or modifiers, history references simply expand to
the entire event, so we might type !cp to redo the copy command or !!|more if the diff output scrolled
off the top of the screen.
To select words from an event, the event specification can be followed by a : and a designator for the
desired words. The words of an input line are numbered from 0, the first word (usually the command name)
being 0, the second word (first argument) being 1, etc. The basic word designators are:
0 The first word (command name).
n The nth argument.
^ The first argument, equivalent to 1.
$ The last argument.
% The word matched by the most recent ?s? search.
x-y A range of words.
-y Equivalent to 0-y.
* Equivalent to ^-$, but returns nothing if the event contains only 1 word.
x* Equivalent to x-$.
x- Equivalent to x*, but omitting the last word ($).
Selected words are inserted into the command line separated by single blanks. For example, the diff
command in the previous example might have been typed as diff !!:1.old !!:1 (using :1 to select the first
argument from the previous event) or diff !-2:2 !-2:1 to select and swap the arguments from the cp
command. If we didn't care about the order of the diff, we might have said diff !-2:1-2 or simply diff
!-2:*. The cp command might have been written cp wumpus.man !#:1.old, using # to refer to the current
event. !n:- hurkle.man would reuse the first two words from the nroff command to say nroff -man
hurkle.man.
The : separating the event specification from the word designator can be omitted if the argument selector
begins with a ^, $, *, % or -. For example, our diff command might have been diff !!^.old !!^ or,
equivalently, diff !!$.old !!$. However, if !! is abbreviated !, an argument selector beginning with -
will be interpreted as an event specification.
The word(s) in a history reference can be edited by following them with one or more modifiers, each
preceded by a colon (:):
h Remove a trailing pathname component, leaving the head.
t Remove all leading pathname components, leaving the tail.
r Remove a filename extension .xxx, leaving the root name.
e Remove all but the extension.
s/l/r/ Substitute l for r. l is simply a string like r, not a regular expression as in the
eponymous ed(1) command. Any character may be used as the delimiter in place of /; a \ can
be used to quote the delimiter inside l and r. The character & in the r is replaced by l; \
also quotes &. If l is empty, the l from the previous substitution is used, or if there is
none, the s from the most recent ?s? search. The trailing delimiter may be omitted if it is
immediately followed by a newline.
& Repeat the previous substitution.
g Global substitution, for example :gs/foo/bar/ or :g&. Applies the s or & modifier to the
entire command line.
a Same as g.
p Print the new command line but do not execute it.
q Quote the expanded words, preventing further expansions.
x Like q, but break into words at blanks, tabs and newlines.
Modifiers are applied to only the first modifiable word (unless g or a is used). It is an error for no
word to be modifiable.
For example, the diff command might have been written as diff wumpus.man.old !#^:r, using :r to remove
.old from the first argument on the same line (!#^). We might follow mail -s "I forgot my password" rot
with !:s/rot/root to correct the spelling of root.
History expansions also occur when an input line begins with ^. When it is the first character on an
input line, it is an abbreviation of !:s^. Thus we might have said ^rot^root to make the spelling
correction in the previous example. This is the only history expansion that does not explicitly begin
with !.
If a word on a command line begins with the history comment character #, history expansion is ignored for
the rest of that line. This usually causes the shell parser (which uses the same character to signal a
comment) to treat the rest of the line as a comment as well, but as history expansion is parsed
separately from the shell grammar and with different rules, this cannot be guaranteed in all cases. If
the history comment character is changed, the shell grammar comment character does not change along with
it.
The three characters used to signal history expansion can be changed using the histchars shell variable;
see Shell Variables above.
In-line Editing Options.
Normally, each command line entered from a terminal device is simply typed followed by a new-line
(`RETURN' or `LINE FEED'). If either the emacs, gmacs, or vi option is active, the user can edit the
command line. To be in either of these edit modes, set the corresponding option. An editing option is
automatically selected each time the VISUAL or EDITOR variable is assigned a value matching any of these
editor names; for details, see Shell Variables above under VISUAL.
The editing features require that the user's terminal accept `RETURN' as carriage return without line
feed and that a space (` ') must overwrite the current character on the screen.
Unless the multiline option is on, the editing modes implement a concept where the user is looking
through a window at the current line. The window width is the value of COLUMNS if it is defined,
otherwise 80. If the window width is too small to display the prompt and leave at least 8 columns to
enter input, the prompt is truncated from the left. If the line is longer than the window width minus
two, a mark is displayed at the end of the window to notify the user. As the cursor moves and reaches
the window boundaries, the window will be centered about the cursor. The mark is a > (<, *) if the line
extends on the right (left, both) side(s) of the window.
The search commands in each edit mode provide access to the history file. Only strings are matched, not
patterns, although a leading ^ in the string restricts the match to begin at the first character in the
line.
Each of the edit modes has an operation to list the files or commands that match a partially entered
word. When applied to the first word on the line, or the first word after a ;, |, &, or (, and the word
does not begin with ∼ or contain a /, the list of aliases, functions, and executable commands defined by
the PATH variable that could match the partial word is displayed. Otherwise, the list of files that
match the given word is displayed. If the partially entered word does not contain any file expansion
characters, a * is appended before generating these lists. After displaying the generated list, the
input line is redrawn. These operations are called command name listing and file name listing,
respectively. There are additional operations, referred to as command name completion and file name
completion, which compute the list of matching commands or files, but instead of printing the list,
replace the current word with a complete or partial match. For file name completion, if the match is
unique, a / is appended if the file is a directory and a space is appended if the file is not a
directory. Otherwise, the longest common prefix for all the matching files replaces the word. For
command name completion, only the portion of the file names after the last / are used to find the longest
command prefix. If only a single name matches this prefix, then the word is replaced with the command
name followed by a space. When using a tab for completion that does not yield a unique match, a
subsequent tab will provide a numbered list of matching alternatives. A specific selection can be made
by entering the selection number followed by a tab. Neither completion nor listing operations are
attempted before the first character in a line.
Key Bindings.
The KEYBD trap can be used to intercept keys as they are typed and change the characters that are
actually seen by the shell. This trap is executed after each character (or sequence of characters when
the first character is ESC) is entered while reading from a terminal. The variable .sh.edchar contains
the character or character sequence which generated the trap. Changing the value of .sh.edchar in the
trap action causes the shell to behave as if the new value were entered from the keyboard rather than the
original value.
The variable .sh.edcol is set to the input column number of the cursor at the time of the input. The
variable .sh.edmode is set to ESC when in vi input mode (see below) and set to the empty string
otherwise. Prepending ${.sh.editmode} to a value assigned to .sh.edchar will cause the shell to change
to control mode if it is not already in this mode.
This trap is not invoked for characters entered as arguments to editing directives, or while reading
input for a character search.
Emacs Editing Mode.
This mode is entered by enabling either the emacs or gmacs option. The only difference between these two
modes is the way they handle ^T. To edit, the user moves the cursor to the point needing correction and
then inserts or deletes characters or words as needed. All the editing commands are control characters
or escape sequences. The notation for control characters is caret (^) followed by the character. For
example, ^F is the notation for control F. This is entered by depressing `f' while holding down the
`CTRL' (control) key. The `SHIFT' key is not depressed. (The notation ^? indicates the DEL (delete)
key.)
The notation for escape sequences is M- followed by a character. For example, M-f (pronounced Meta f) is
entered by depressing ESC (ASCII 033) followed by `f'. (M-F would be the notation for ESC followed by
`SHIFT' (capital) `F'.)
All edit commands operate from any place on the line (not just at the beginning). Neither the `RETURN'
nor the `LINE FEED' key is entered after edit commands except when noted.
The M-[ multi-character commands below are DEC VT220 escape sequences generated by special keys on
standard PC keyboards, such as the arrow keys. You could type them directly but they are meant to
recognize the keys in question, which are indicated in parentheses.
^F Move cursor forward (right) one character.
M-[C (Right arrow) Same as ^F.
M-f Move cursor forward one word. (The emacs editor's idea of a word is a string of characters
consisting of only letters, digits and underscores.)
M-[1;3C (Alt-Right arrow) Same as M-f.
M-[1;5C (Ctrl-Right arrow) Same as M-f.
M-[1;9C (iTerm2 Alt-Right arrow) Same as M-f.
^B Move cursor backward (left) one character.
M-[D (Left arrow) Same as ^B.
M-b Move cursor backward one word.
M-[1;3D (Alt-Left arrow) Same as M-b.
M-[1;5D (Ctrl-Left arrow) Same as M-b.
M-[1;9D (iTerm2 Alt-Left arrow) Same as M-b.
^A Move cursor to start of line.
M-[H (Home) Same as ^A.
M-[1~ Same as ^A.
M-[7~ Same as ^A.
^E Move cursor to end of line.
M-[F (End) Same as ^E.
M-[4~ Same as ^E.
M-[8~ Same as ^E.
M-[Y Same as ^E.
M-OA (Up Arrow) Same as M-[A.
M-OB (Down Arrow) Same as M-[B.
M-OC (Right Arrow) Same as M-[C.
M-OD (Left Arrow) Same as M-[D.
M-O5C (Ctrl-Right Arrow) Same as M-f.
M-O5D (Ctrl-Left Arrow) Same as M-b.
^]char Move cursor forward to character char on current line.
M-^]char Move cursor backward to character char on current line.
^X^X Interchange the cursor and mark.
erase (User defined erase character as defined by the stty(1) command, usually ^H.) Delete previous
character.
lnext (User defined literal next character as defined by the stty(1) command, or ^V if not defined.)
Removes the next character's editing features (if any).
^D Delete current character.
M-[3~ (Forward delete) Same as ^D.
M-d Delete current word.
M-[3;5~ (Ctrl-Delete) Same as M-d.
M-^H (Meta-backspace) Delete previous word.
M-h Delete previous word.
M-^? (Meta-DEL) Delete previous word (if your interrupt character is ^? (DEL, the default) then
this command will not work).
^T Transpose current character with previous character and advance the cursor in emacs mode.
Transpose two previous characters in gmacs mode.
^C Capitalize current character.
M-c Capitalize current word.
M-l Change the current word to lower case.
^K Delete from the cursor to the end of the line. If preceded by a numerical parameter whose
value is less than the current cursor position, then delete from given position up to the
cursor. If preceded by a numerical parameter whose value is greater than the current cursor
position, then delete from cursor up to given cursor position.
^W Kill from the cursor to the mark.
M-p Push the region from the cursor to the mark on the stack.
kill (User defined kill character as defined by the stty(1) command, usually ^U.) Kill the entire
current line. If two kill characters are entered in succession, all kill characters from then
on cause a line feed (useful when using paper terminals). A subsequent pair of kill characters
undoes this change.
^Y Restore last item removed from line. (Yank item back to the line.)
^X^E Return the command hist -e ${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vi}} in the input buffer to call a full editor —
vi by default — on the current command line.
^L Line feed and print current line.
M-^L Clear the screen.
^@ (Null character) Set mark.
M-space (Meta space) Set mark.
^J (New line) Execute the current line.
^M (Return) Execute the current line.
eof End-of-file character, normally ^D, is processed as an End-of-file only if the current line is
empty.
^P Fetch previous command. Each time ^P is entered the previous command back in time is accessed.
Moves back one line when not on the first line of a multi-line command.
M-[A (Up arrow) If the cursor is at the end of the line, it is equivalent to ^R with string set to
the contents of the current line. Otherwise, it is equivalent to ^P.
M-< Fetch the least recent (oldest) history line.
M-> Fetch the most recent (youngest) history line.
^N Fetch next command line. Each time ^N is entered the next command line forward in time is
accessed.
M-[B (Down arrow) Equivalent to ^N.
^Rstring Reverse search history for a previous command line containing string. If a parameter of zero
is given, the search is forward. String is terminated by a `RETURN' or `NEW LINE'. If string
is preceded by a ^, the matched line must begin with string. If string is omitted, then the
next command line containing the most recent string is accessed. In this case a parameter of
zero reverses the direction of the search.
^G Exit reverse search mode.
^O Operate - Execute the current line and fetch the next line relative to current line from the
history file.
M-digits (Escape) Define numeric parameter, the digits are taken as a parameter to the next command.
The commands that accept a parameter are ^F, ^B, erase, ^C, ^D, ^K, ^R, ^P, ^N, ^], M-., M-^],
M-_, M-=, M-b, M-c, M-d, M-f, M-h, M-l, M-^H, and the arrow keys and forward-delete key.
M-letter Soft-key - Your alias list is searched for an alias by the name _letter and if an alias of this
name is defined, its value will be inserted on the input queue. The letter must not be one of
the above meta-functions.
M-[letter Soft-key - Your alias list is searched for an alias by the name __letter and if an alias of
this name is defined, its value will be inserted on the input queue. This can be used to
program function keys on many terminals.
M-. The last word of the previous command is inserted on the line. If preceded by a numeric
parameter, the value of this parameter determines which word to insert rather than the last
word.
M-_ Same as M-..
M-* Attempt pathname expansion on the current word. An asterisk is appended if the word doesn't
match any file or contain any special pattern characters.
M-ESC Command or file name completion as described above.
^I tab Attempts command or file name completion as described above. If a partial completion occurs,
repeating this will behave as if M-= were entered. If no match is found or entered after
space, a tab is inserted.
M-= If not preceded by a numeric parameter, it generates the list of matching commands or file
names as described above. Otherwise, the word under the cursor is replaced by the item
corresponding to the value of the numeric parameter from the most recently generated command or
file list. If the cursor is not on a word, it is inserted instead.
^U Multiply parameter of next command by 4.
\ If the backslashctrl shell option is on (which is the default setting), this escapes the next
character. Editing characters, the user's erase, kill and interrupt (normally ^C) characters
may be entered in a command line or in a search string if preceded by a \. The \ removes the
next character's editing features (if any). See also lnext which is not subject to any shell
option.
M-^V Display version of the shell.
M-[2~ (Insert) Escape the next character.
M-# If the line does not begin with a #, a # is inserted at the beginning of the line and after
each new-line, and the line is entered. This causes a comment to be inserted in the history
file. If the line begins with a #, the # is deleted and one # after each new-line is also
deleted.
Vi Editing Mode.
There are two typing modes. Initially, when you enter a command you are in the input mode. To edit, the
user enters control mode by typing ESC (033) and moves the cursor to the point needing correction and
then inserts or deletes characters or words as needed. Most control commands accept an optional repeat
count prior to the command.
The notation for control characters used below is ^ followed by a character. For instance, ^H is entered
by holding down the Control key and pressing H. ^[ (Control+[) is equivalent to the ESC key. The
notation for escape sequences is ^[ followed by one or more characters.
The ^[[ (ESC [) multi-character commands below are DEC VT220 escape sequences generated by special keys
on standard PC keyboards, such as the arrow keys, which are indicated in parentheses. When in input mode,
these keys will switch you to control mode before performing the associated action. These sequences can
use preceding repeat count parameters, but only when the ^[ and the subsequent [ are entered into the
input buffer at the same time, such as when pressing one of those keys.
Input Edit Commands
By default the editor is in input mode.
erase (User defined erase character as defined by the stty(1) command, usually ^H or #.)
Delete previous character.
^W Delete the previous blank separated word.
eof As the first character of the line causes the shell to terminate unless the ignoreeof
option is set. Otherwise this character is ignored.
lnext (User defined literal next character as defined by the stty(1) or ^V if not defined.)
Removes the next character's editing features (if any).
\ If the backslashctrl shell option is on (which is the default setting), this escapes the
next erase or kill character.
^I tab Attempts command or file name completion as described above and returns to input mode.
If a partial completion occurs, repeating this will behave as if = were entered from
control mode. If no match is found or entered after space, a tab is inserted.
Motion Edit Commands
These commands will move the cursor.
[count]l Cursor forward (right) one character.
[count]^[[C
(Right arrow) Same as l.
[count]w Cursor forward one alphanumeric word.
[count]W Cursor to the beginning of the next word that follows a blank.
[count]e Cursor to end of word.
[count]E Cursor to end of the current blank delimited word.
[count]h Cursor backward (left) one character.
[count]^[[D
(Left arrow) Same as h.
[count]b Cursor backward one word.
[count]B Cursor to preceding blank separated word.
[count]| Cursor to column count.
[count]fc Find the next character c in the current line.
[count]Fc Find the previous character c in the current line.
[count]tc Equivalent to f followed by h.
[count]Tc Equivalent to F followed by l.
[count]; Repeats count times, the last single character find command, f, F, t, or T.
[count], Reverses the last single character find command count times.
0 Cursor to start of line.
^[[H (Home) Same as 0.
^[[1~ Same as 0.
^[[7~ Same as 0.
^[[1;3D (Alt-Left arrow) Same as b.
^[[1;5D (Ctrl-Left arrow) Same as b.
^[[1;9D (iTerm2 Alt-Left arrow) Same as b.
^[[1;3C (Alt-Right arrow) Same as w.
^[[1;5C (Ctrl-Right arrow) Same as w.
^[[1;9C (iTerm2 Alt-Right arrow) Same as w.
^[[2~ (Insert) Same as i.
^[[3;5~ (Ctrl-Delete) Same as dw.
^[OA (Up Arrow) Same as ^[[A.
^[OB (Down Arrow) Same as ^[[B.
^[OC (Right Arrow) Same as ^[[C.
^[OD (Left Arrow) Same as ^[[D.
^[O5C (Ctrl-Right Arrow) Same as w.
^[O5D (Ctrl-Left Arrow) Same as b.
^ Cursor to first non-blank character in line.
$ Cursor to end of line.
^[[F (End) Same as $.
^[[4~ Same as $.
^[[8~ Same as $.
^[[Y Same as $.
^G Exit reverse search mode.
% Moves to balancing (, ), {, }, [, or ]. If cursor is not on one of the above
characters, the remainder of the line is searched for the first occurrence of one of the
above characters first.
Search Edit Commands
These commands access your command history.
[count]k Fetch previous command. Each time k is entered the previous command back in time is
accessed.
[count]- Equivalent to k.
[count]^[[A
(Up arrow) If cursor is at the end of the line it is equivalent to / with string set to
the contents of the current line. Otherwise, it is equivalent to k.
[count]j Fetch next command. Each time j is entered the next command forward in time is
accessed.
[count]+ Equivalent to j.
[count]^[[B
(Down arrow) Equivalent to j.
[count]G The command number count is fetched. The default is the least recent history command.
/string Search backward through history for a previous command containing string. String is
terminated by a `RETURN' or `NEW LINE'. If string is preceded by a ^, the matched line
must begin with string. If string is empty, the previous string will be used.
?string Same as / except that search will be in the forward direction.
n Search for next match of the last pattern to / or ? commands.
N Search for next match of the last pattern to / or ?, but in reverse direction.
Text Modification Edit Commands
These commands will modify the line.
a Enter input mode and enter text after the current character.
A Append text to the end of the line. Equivalent to $a.
[count]cmotion
c[count]motion
Delete current character through the character that motion would move the cursor to and
enter input mode. If motion is c, the entire line will be deleted and input mode
entered.
C Delete the current character through the end of line and enter input mode. Equivalent
to c$.
S Equivalent to cc.
[count]s Replace characters under the cursor in input mode.
D Delete the current character through the end of line. Equivalent to d$.
[count]dmotion
d[count]motion
Delete current character through the character that motion would move to. If motion is
d , the entire line will be deleted.
i Enter input mode and insert text before the current character.
I Insert text before the first non-blank character. Equivalent to ^i.
[count]P Place the previous text modification before the cursor.
[count]p Place the previous text modification after the cursor.
R Enter input mode and replace characters on the screen with characters you type overlay
fashion.
[count]rc Replace the count character(s) starting at the current cursor position with c, and
advance the cursor.
[count]x Delete current character.
[count]^[[3~
(Forward delete) Same as x.
[count]X Delete preceding character.
[count]. Repeat the previous text modification command.
[count]∼ Invert the case of the count character(s) starting at the current cursor position and
advance the cursor.
[count]_ Causes the count word of the previous command to be appended and input mode entered.
The last word is used if count is omitted.
* Causes an * to be appended to the current word and pathname expansion attempted. If no
match is found, it rings the bell. Otherwise, the word is replaced by the matching
pattern and input mode is entered.
\ Command or file name completion as described above.
Other Edit Commands
Miscellaneous commands.
[count]ymotion
y[count]motion
Yank current character through character that motion would move the cursor to and puts
them into the delete buffer. The text and cursor are unchanged.
yy Yanks the entire line.
Y Yanks from current position to end of line. Equivalent to y$.
u Undo the last text modifying command.
U Undo all the text modifying commands performed on the line.
[count]v Returns the command hist -e ${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vi}} count in the input buffer to call a
full editor — vi by default — on a history entry. If count is omitted, then the current
line is used.
^L Line feed and print current line. Has effect only in control mode.
^J (New line) Execute the current line, regardless of mode.
^M (Return) Execute the current line, regardless of mode.
# If the first character of the command is a #, then this command deletes this # and each
# that follows a newline. Otherwise, sends the line after inserting a # in front of
each line in the command. Useful for causing the current line to be inserted in the
history as a comment and uncommenting previously commented commands in the history file.
[count]= If count is not specified, it generates the list of matching commands or file names as
described above. Otherwise, the word under the cursor is replaced by the count item
from the most recently generated command or file list. If the cursor is not on a word,
it is inserted instead.
@letter Your alias list is searched for an alias by the name _letter and if an alias of this
name is defined, its value will be inserted on the input queue for processing.
^V Display version of the shell.
Built-in Commands.
The simple-commands listed below are built in to the shell and are executed in the same process as the
shell. The effects of any added Input/Output redirections are local to the command, except for the exec
and redirect commands. Unless otherwise indicated, the output is written on standard output (file
descriptor 1) and the exit status, when there is no syntax error, is zero. Except for :, true, false,
and echo, all built-in commands accept -- to indicate end of options, and are self-documenting.
The self-documenting commands interpret the option --man as a request to display that command's own
manual page, --help as a request to display the OPTIONS section from their manual page, and -? as a
request to print a brief usage message. All these are processed as error messages, so they are written
on standard error (file descriptor 2) and to pipe them into a pager such as more(1) you need to add a
2>&1 redirection before the |. The display of boldface text depends on whether standard error is on a
terminal, so is disabled when using a pager. Exporting the ERROR_OPTIONS environment variable with a
value containing emphasis will force this on; a value containing noemphasis forces it off. The test/[
command needs an additional -- argument to recognize self-documentation options, e.g. test --man --. The
exec and redirect commands, as they make redirections permanent, should use self-documentation options in
a subshell when redirecting, for example: (redirect --man) 2>&1. There are advanced output options as
well; see getopts --man for more information.
Commands that are preceded by a † symbol below are special built-in commands and are treated specially in
the following ways:
1. Variable assignment lists preceding the command remain in effect when the command
completes.
2. I/O redirections are processed after variable assignments.
3. Errors cause a script that contains them to abort.
4. They are not valid function names.
Commands that are preceded by a ‡ symbol below are declaration commands. Any following words that are in
the format of a variable assignment are expanded with the same rules as a variable assignment. This
means that tilde expansion is performed after the = sign, array assignments of the form
varname=(assign_list) are supported, and field splitting and pathname expansion are not performed.
† : [ arg ... ]
The command only expands parameters.
† . name [ arg ... ]
If name is a function defined with the function name reserved word syntax, the function is
executed in the current environment (as if it had been defined with the name() syntax). Otherwise
if name refers to a file, the file is read in its entirety and the commands are executed in the
current shell environment. The search path specified by PATH is used to find the directory
containing the file. If any arguments arg are given, they become the positional parameters while
processing the . command and the original positional parameters are restored upon completion.
Otherwise the positional parameters are unchanged. The exit status is the exit status of the last
command executed.
[ expression ]
The [ command is the same as test, with the exception that an additional closing ] argument is
required. See test below.
alias [ -ptx ] [ name[ =value ] ] ...
alias with no arguments prints the list of aliases in the form name=value on standard output. The
-p option causes the word alias to be inserted before each one. When one or more arguments are
given, an alias is defined for each name whose value is given. A trailing space in value causes
the next word to be checked for alias substitution. With the -t option, each name is looked up as
a command in $PATH and its path is added to the hash table as a 'tracked alias'. If no name is
given, this prints the hash table. See hash. Without the -t option, for each name in the argument
list for which no value is given, the name and value of the alias is printed. The obsolete -x
option has no effect in most contexts, although if it's used with -t it will suppress all output.
The exit status is non-zero if a name is given, but no value, and no alias has been defined for
the name.
autoload name ...
Marks each name undefined so that the FPATH variable will be searched to find the function
definition when the function is referenced. The same as typeset -fu.
bg [ job... ]
This command is only on systems that support job control. Puts each specified job into the
background. The current job is put in the background if job is not specified. See Jobs for a
description of the format of job.
† break [ n ]
Exit from the enclosing for, while, until, or select loop, if any. If n is specified, then break
n levels.
builtin [ -ds ] [ -f file ] [ name ... ]
If name is not specified, and no -f option is specified, the built-ins are printed on standard
output. The -s option prints only the special built-ins. Otherwise, each name represents the
pathname whose basename is the name of the built-in. The entry point function name is determined
by prepending b_ to the built-in name. A built-in specified by a pathname will only be executed
when that pathname would be found during the path search. Built-ins found in libraries loaded via
the .paths file will associate with the pathname of the directory containing the .paths file.
The ISO C/C++ prototype is b_mycommand(int argc, char *argv[], void *context) for the builtin
command mycommand where argv is array an of argc elements and context is an optional pointer to a
Shell_t structure as described in <ast/shell.h>.
Special built-ins cannot be bound to a pathname or deleted. The -d option deletes each of the
given built-ins. On systems that support dynamic loading, the -f option names a shared library
containing the code for built-ins. The shared library prefix and/or suffix, which depend on the
system, can be omitted. Once a library is loaded, its symbols become available for subsequent
invocations of builtin. Multiple libraries can be specified with separate invocations of the
builtin command. Libraries are searched in the reverse order in which they are specified. When a
library is loaded, it looks for a function in the library whose name is lib_init() and invokes
this function with an argument of 0.
cd [ -L ] [ -eP ] [ arg ]
cd [ -L ] [ -eP ] old new
This command can be in either of two forms. In the first form it changes the current directory to
arg. If arg is - the directory is changed to the previous directory. The shell variable HOME is
the default arg. The variable PWD is set to the current directory. The shell variable CDPATH
defines the search path for the directory containing arg. Alternative directory names are
separated by a colon (:). The default path is the empty string (specifying the current
directory). Note that the current directory may be specified by a dot (.) or by an empty path
name, either of which can appear immediately after the equal sign or between the colon delimiters
anywhere else in the path list. If arg begins with a / then the search path is not used.
Otherwise, each directory in the path is searched for arg.
The second form of cd substitutes the string new for the string old in the current directory name,
PWD, and tries to change to this new directory.
By default, symbolic link names are treated literally when finding the directory name. This is
equivalent to the -L option. The -P option causes symbolic links to be resolved when determining
the directory. The last instance of -L or -P on the command line determines which method is used.
If -e and -P are both in effect and the correct PWD could not be determined after successfully
changing the directory, cd will return with exit status one and produce no output. If any other
error occurs while both flags are active, the exit status is greater than one.
The cd command may not be executed by rksh.
command [ -pvxV ] name [ arg ... ]
With the -v option, command is equivalent to the built-in whence command described below. The -V
option causes command to act like whence -v.
Without the -v or -V options, command executes name with the arguments given by arg. Functions
and aliases will not be searched for when finding name. If name refers to a special built-in, as
marked with † in this manual, command disables the special properties described above for that
mark, executing the command as a regular built-in. (For example, using command set -o option-name
prevents a script from terminating when an invalid option name is given.)
The -p option causes the operating system's standard utilities path (as output by getconf PATH) to
be searched rather than the one defined by the value of PATH.
The -x option searches for name as an external command, bypassing built-ins. If the arguments
contain at least one word that expands to multiple arguments, for example *.txt or "$@", then the
-x option also allows executing external commands with argument lists that are longer than the
operating system allows. This functionality is similar to xargs(1) but is easier to use. The shell
does this by invoking the external command multiple times if needed, dividing the expanded
argument list over the invocations. Any arguments that come before the first word that expands to
multiple arguments, as well as any that follow the last such word, are repeated for each
invocation. This allows each invocation to use the same command options, as well as the same
trailing destination arguments for commands like cp(1) or mv(1). When all invocations are
completed, command -x exits with the status of the invocation that had the highest exit status.
(Note that command -x may still fail with an "argument list too long" error if a single argument
exceeds the maximum length of the argument list, or if a long arguments list contains no word that
expands to multiple arguments.)
‡ compound vname[=value] ...
Causes each vname to be a compound variable. The same as typeset -C.
† continue [ n ]
Resume the next iteration of the enclosing for, while, until, or select loop. If n is specified,
then resume at the n-th enclosing loop.
disown [ job... ]
Causes the shell not to send a HUP signal to each given job, or all active jobs if job is omitted,
when a login shell terminates.
echo [ arg ... ]
When the first arg does not begin with a -, and none of the arguments contain a \, then echo
prints each of its arguments separated by a space and terminated by a new-line. Otherwise, the
behavior of echo is system dependent and print or printf described below should be used. See
echo(1) for usage and description.
‡ enum [ -i ] type[=(value ...) ] ...
Creates, for each type specified, an enumeration type declaration command named type. Variables
of the created type can only store any one of the values given. For example, enum bool=(false
true) creates a Boolean variable type of which variables may be declared like bool x=true y=false.
If =(value ...) is omitted, then type must be an indexed array variable with at least two elements
and the values are taken from this array variable. If -i is specified the values are case-
insensitive. Declaration commands are created as special builtins that cannot be removed or
overridden by shell functions. Each created declaration command has a --man option that shows
documentation on its type's behavior and possible values.
Within arithmetic expressions (see Arithmetic Evaluation above), enumeration type values translate
to index numbers between 0 and the number of defined values minus 1. It is an error for an
arithmetic expression to assign a value outside of that range. Decimal fractions are ignored.
Taking the bool type from the example above, if a variable of this type is used in an arithmetic
expression, false translates to 0 and true to 1. Enumeration values may also be used directly in
an arithmetic expression that refers to a variable of an enumeration type. To continue our
example, for a bool variable v, ((v==true)) is the same as ((v==1)) and if a variable named true
exists, it is ignored.
† eval [ arg ... ]
The arguments are read as input to the shell and the resulting command(s) executed.
† exec [ -c ] [ -a name ] [ arg ... ]
If arg is given, the command specified by the arguments is executed in place of this shell without
creating a new process. The value of the SHLVL environment variable is decreased by one, unless
the shell replaced is a subshell. The -c option causes the environment to be cleared before
applying variable assignments associated with the exec invocation. The -a option causes name
rather than the first arg, to become argv[0] for the new process. If arg is not given and only
I/O redirections are given, then this command persistently modifies file descriptors as in
redirect.
† exit [ n ]
Causes the shell to exit with the exit status specified by n. The value will be the least
significant 8 bits of n (if specified) or of the exit status of the last command executed. An
end-of-file will also cause the shell to exit, except for an interactive shell that has the
ignoreeof option turned on (see set below).
†‡ export [ -p ] [ name[=value] ] ...
If name is not given, the names and values of each variable with the export attribute are printed
with the values quoted in a manner that allows them to be re-input. The export command is the
same as typeset -x except that if you use export within a function, no local variable is created.
The -p option causes the word export to be inserted before each one. Otherwise, the given names
are marked for automatic export to the environment of subsequently-executed commands.
false Does nothing, and exits 1. Used with until for infinite loops.
fc [ -e ename ] [ -N num ] [ -nlr ] [ first [ last ] ]
fc -s [ old=new ] [ command ]
The same as hist.
fg [ job... ]
This command is only on systems that support job control. Each job specified is brought to the
foreground and waited for in the specified order. Otherwise, the current job is brought into the
foreground. See Jobs for a description of the format of job.
‡ float vname[=value] ...
Declares each vname to be a long floating point number. The same as typeset -lE.
functions [ -Stux ] [ name ... ]
Lists functions. The same as typeset -f.
getconf [ name [ pathname ] ]
Prints the current value of the configuration parameter given by name. The configuration
parameters are defined by the IEEE POSIX 1003.1 and IEEE POSIX 1003.2 standards. (See pathconf(2)
and sysconf(3).) The pathname argument is required for parameters whose value depends on the
location in the file system. If no arguments are given, getconf prints the names and values of
the current configuration parameters. The pathname / is used for each of the parameters that
requires pathname.
getopts [ -a name ] optstring vname [ arg ... ]
Checks arg for legal options. If arg is omitted, the positional parameters are used. An option
argument begins with a + or a -. An option not beginning with + or - or the argument -- ends the
options. Options beginning with + are only recognized when optstring begins with a +. optstring
contains the letters that getopts recognizes. If a letter is followed by a :, that option is
expected to have an argument. The options can be separated from the argument by blanks. The
option -? causes getopts to generate a usage message on standard error. The -a argument can be
used to specify the name to use for the usage message, which defaults to $0.
getopts places the next option letter it finds inside variable vname each time it is invoked. The
option letter will be prepended with a + when arg begins with a +. The index of the next arg is
stored in OPTIND. The option argument, if any, gets stored in OPTARG.
A leading : in optstring causes getopts to store the letter of an invalid option in OPTARG, and to
set vname to ? for an unknown option and to : when a required option argument is missing.
Otherwise, getopts prints an error message. The exit status is non-zero when there are no more
options.
There is no way to specify any of the options :, +, -, ?, [, and ]. The option # can only be
specified as the first option.
hash [ -r ] [ utility ]
hash displays or modifies the hash table with the locations of recently used programs. If given no
arguments, it lists all command/path associations (a.k.a. 'tracked aliases') in the hash table.
Otherwise, hash performs a PATH search for each utility supplied and adds the result to the hash
table. The -r option empties the hash table. This can also be achieved by resetting PATH.
hist [ -e ename ] [ -N num ] [ -nlr ] [ first [ last ] ]
hist -s [ old=new ] [ command ]
In the first form, a range of commands from first to last is selected from the last HISTSIZE
commands that were typed at the terminal. The arguments first and last may be specified as a
number or as a string. A string is used to locate the most recent command starting with the given
string. A negative number is used as an offset to the current command number. If the -l option
is selected, the commands are listed on standard output. Otherwise, the editor program ename is
invoked on a file containing these keyboard commands. If ename is not supplied, then the value of
the variable HISTEDIT is used. If HISTEDIT is not set, then FCEDIT (default /bin/ed) is used as
the editor. When editing is complete, the edited command(s) is executed if the changes have been
saved. If last is not specified, then it will be set to first. If first is not specified, the
default is the previous command for editing and -16 for listing. The option -r reverses the order
of the commands and the option -n suppresses command numbers when listing. In the second form,
command is interpreted as first described above and defaults to the last command executed. The
resulting command is executed after the optional substitution old=new is performed. The option -N
causes hist to start num commands back.
‡ integer vname[=value] ...
Declares each vname to be a long integer number. The same as typeset -li.
jobs [ -lnp ] [ job ... ]
Lists information about each given job; or all active jobs if job is omitted. The -l option lists
process IDs in addition to the normal information. The -n option only displays jobs that have
stopped or exited since last notified. The -p option causes only the process group to be listed.
See Jobs for a description of the format of job.
kill [ -s signame ] job ...
kill [ -n signum ] job ...
kill -Ll [ sig ... ]
Sends either the TERM (terminate) signal or the specified signal to the specified jobs or
processes. Signals are either given by number with the -n option or by name with the -s option
(as given in <signal.h>, stripped of the prefix ``SIG''. For backward compatibility, the n and s
can be omitted and the number or name placed immediately after the -. If the signal being sent is
TERM (terminate) or HUP (hangup), then the job or process will be sent a CONT (continue) signal if
it is stopped. The argument job can be the process ID of a process that is not a member of one of
the active jobs. See Jobs for a description of the format of job. In the third form, kill -l or
kill -L, if sig is not specified, the signal names are listed. The -l option lists only the
signal names. The -L option lists each signal name and corresponding number. Otherwise, for each
sig that is a name, the corresponding signal number is listed. For each sig that is a number, the
signal name corresponding to the least significant 8 bits of sig is listed.
let arg ...
Each arg is a separate arithmetic expression to be evaluated. let only recognizes octal numbers
starting with 0 when the set option letoctal is on. See Arithmetic Evaluation above for a
description of arithmetic expression evaluation.
The exit status is 0 if the value of the last expression is non-zero, and 1 otherwise.
‡ nameref vname[=refname] ...
Declares each vname to be a variable name reference. The same as typeset -n.
print [ -CRenprsv ] [ -u unit ] [ -f format ] [ arg ... ]
With no options or with option - or --, each arg is printed on standard output. The -f option
causes the arguments to be printed as described by printf. In this case, any e, n, r, R options
are ignored. Otherwise, unless the -C, -R, -r, or -v are specified, the following escape
conventions will be applied:
\a The alert character (ASCII 07).
\b The backspace character (ASCII 010).
\c Causes print to end without processing more arguments and not adding a new-line.
\f The formfeed character (ASCII 014).
\n The newline character (ASCII 012).
\r The carriage return character (ASCII 015).
\t The tab character (ASCII 011).
\v The vertical tab character (ASCII 013).
\E The escape character (ASCII 033).
\\ The backslash character \.
\0x The character defined by the 1, 2, or 3-digit octal string given by x.
The -R option will print all subsequent arguments and options other than -n. The -e causes the
above escape conventions to be applied. This is the default behavior. It reverses the effect of
an earlier -r. The -p option causes the arguments to be written onto the pipe of the process
spawned with |& instead of standard output. The -v option treats each arg as a variable name and
writes the value in the printf %B format. The -C option treats each arg as a variable name and
writes the value in the printf %#B format. The -s option causes the arguments to be written onto
the history file instead of standard output. The -u option can be used to specify a one digit
file descriptor unit number unit on which the output will be placed. The default is 1. If the
option -n is used, no new-line is added to the output.
printf [ -v vname ] format [ arg ... ]
The arguments arg are printed on standard output in accordance with the ANSI C formatting rules
associated with the format string format. If the number of arguments exceeds the number of format
specifications, the format string is reused to format remaining arguments. The following
extensions can also be used:
%b A %b format can be used instead of %s to cause escape sequences in the corresponding arg to
be expanded as described in print.
%B A %B option causes each of the arguments to be treated as variable names and the binary
value of variable will be printed. The alternate flag # causes a compound variable to be
output on a single line. This is most useful for compound variables and variables whose
attribute is -b.
%H A %H format can be used instead of %s to cause characters in arg that are special in HTML
and XML to be output as their entity name. The alternate flag # formats the output for use
as a URI.
%p A %p format will convert the given number to hexadecimal.
%P A %P format can be used instead of %s to cause arg to be interpreted as an extended regular
expression and be printed as a shell pattern.
%q A %q format can be used instead of %s to cause the resulting string to be quoted in a
manner than can be reinput to the shell. When q is preceded by the alternative format
specifier, #, the string is quoted in manner suitable as a field in a .csv format file.
%(date-format)T
A %(date-format)T format can be used to treat an argument as a date/time string and to
format the date/time according to the date-format.
%Q A %Q format will convert the given number of seconds to readable time.
%R A %R format can be used instead of %s to cause arg to be interpreted as a shell pattern and
to be printed as an extended regular expression.
%Z A %Z format will output a byte whose value is 0.
%d The precision field of the %d format can be followed by a . and the output base. In this
case, the # flag character causes base# to be prepended. When an output base is specified
without giving a precision (e.g. %..2d), the precision defaults to 1 instead of 0.
# The # flag, when used with the %d format without an output base, displays the output in
powers of 1000 indicated by one of the following suffixes: k M G T P E, and when used with
the %i format displays the output in powers of 1024 indicated by one of the following
suffixes: Ki Mi Gi Ti Pi Ei.
= The = flag centers the output within the specified field width.
L The L flag, when used with the %c or %s formats, treats precision as character width
instead of byte count.
, The , flag, when used with the %d or %f formats, separates groups of digits with the
grouping delimiter (, on groups of 3 in the C locale).
The -v option assigns the output directly to a variable instead of writing it to standard output.
This is faster than capturing the output using a command substitution and avoids the latter's
stripping of final linefeed characters (\n). The vname argument should be a valid variable name,
optionally with one or more array subscripts in square brackets. Note that square brackets should
be quoted to avoid pathname expansion.
pwd [ -LP ]
Outputs the value of the current working directory. The -L option is the default; it prints the
logical name of the current directory. If the -P option is given, all symbolic links are resolved
from the name. The last instance of -L or -P on the command line determines which method is used.
read [ -ACSaprsv ] [ -d delim ] [ -n n ] [ -N n ] [ -t timeout ] [ -u unit ] [ vname?prompt ] [ vname ...
]
The shell input mechanism. One line is read and is broken up into fields using the characters in
IFS as separators. The escape character, \, is used to remove any special meaning for the next
character and for line continuation. The first field is assigned to the first vname, the second
field to the second vname, etc., with leftover fields assigned to the last vname. If vname is
omitted, then REPLY is used as the default vname. When vname has the binary attribute and -n or
-N is specified, the bytes that are read are stored directly into the variable. If you append
?prompt to the first vname, then read will display prompt on standard error before reading if
standard input is a terminal or pipe; the ? should be quoted to protect it from pathname
expansion. The exit status is 0 unless an end-of-file is encountered or read has timed out. The
options for the read command have meaning as follows:
-A Causes the variable vname to be unset and each field that is read to be stored in
successive elements of the indexed array vname.
-C Causes the variable vname to be read as a compound variable. Blanks will be ignored when
finding the beginning open parenthesis.
-N Causes n bytes to be read unless an end-of-file has been encountered or the read times out
because of the -t option.
-S Causes the line to be treated like a record in a .csv format file so that double quotes
can be used to allow the delimiter character and the new-line character to appear within a
field.
-a Same as -A.
-d Causes the read to continue to the first character of delim instead of the newline control
character. Multibyte characters for delim are not supported.
-n Causes at most n bytes to be read instead of a full line, but will return when reading
from a slow device as soon as any characters have been read.
-p Input is read from the current co-process spawned by the shell using ⎪&. An end-of-file
causes read to disconnect the co-process so that another can be created.
-r Raw mode. The \ character is not treated specially.
-s The input will be saved as a command in the history file.
-t Used to specify a timeout in seconds when reading from a terminal or pipe.
-u This option can be used to specify a one-digit file descriptor unit unit to read from.
The file descriptor can be opened with the exec or redirect built-in command. If unit is
p, input is read from the current co-process as with the -p option. The default value of
unit is 0.
-v The value of the first vname will be used as a default value when reading from a terminal
device.
†‡ readonly [ -p ] [ vname[=value] ] ...
If vname is not given, the names and values of each variable with the read-only attribute is
printed with the values quoted in a manner that allows them to be re-input. The -p option causes
the word readonly to be inserted before each one. Otherwise, the given vnames are marked read-
only and these names cannot be changed by subsequent assignment. Unlike typeset -r , readonly
does not create a function-local scope and the given vnames are marked globally read-only by
default. When defining a type, if the value of a read-only subvariable is not defined, the value
is required when creating each instance.
redirect
This command only accepts input/output redirections. It can open and close files and modify file
descriptors from 0 to 9 as specified by the input/output redirection list (see the Input/Output
section above), with the difference that the effect persists past the execution of the redirect
command. When invoking another program, file descriptors greater than 2 that were opened with
this mechanism are only passed on if they are explicitly redirected to themselves as part of the
invocation (e.g. 4>&4) or if the posix option is set.
† return [ n ]
Causes a shell function, dot script (see . and source), or profile script to return to the
invoking shell environment with the exit status specified by n. This status value can use the
full signed integer range as shown by the commands getconf INT_MIN and getconf INT_MAX. A value
outside that range will produce a warning and an exit status of 128. If n is omitted, then the
value of $? is assumed, i.e., the exit status of the last command executed is passed on. If
return is invoked while not in a function, dot script, or profile script, then it behaves the same
as exit.
† set [ ±BCGHabefhkmnprstuvx ] [ ±o [ option ] ] ... [ ±A vname ] [ arg ... ]
The options for this command have meaning as follows:
-A Array assignment. Unset the variable vname and assign values sequentially from the arg
list. If +A is used, the variable vname is not unset first.
-B Enable brace group expansion. On by default, except if ksh is invoked as sh or rsh.
-C Prevents redirection > from truncating existing files. Files that are created are opened
with the O_EXCL mode. Requires >| to truncate a file when turned on.
-G Enables recursive pathname expansion. This adds the double-star pattern ** to the
pathname expansion (see Pathname Expansion above). By itself, it matches the recursive
contents of the current directory, which is to say, all files and directories in the
current directory and in all its subdirectories, sub-subdirectories, and so on. If the
pathname pattern ends in **/, only directories and subdirectories are matched, including
symbolic links that point to directories. A prefixed directory name is not included in
the results unless that directory was itself found by a pattern. For example, dir/**
matches the recursive contents of dir but not dir itself, whereas di[r]/** matches both
dir itself and the recursive contents of dir. Symbolic links to non-directories are not
followed. Symbolic links to directories are followed if they are specified literally or
match a pattern as described under Pathname Expansion, but not if they result from a
double-star pattern.
-H Enable !-style history expansion similar to csh(1). See History Expansion above.
-a All variables that are assigned a value while this option is on are automatically
exported, unless they have a dot in their name. Variables created in namespaces declared
with the namespace keyword (see Name Spaces above) are only exported while their name
space is active.
-b Prints job completion messages as soon as a background job changes state rather than
waiting for the next prompt. If one of the shell line editors is in use (see In-line
Editing Options above), the completion message is inserted directly above the command line
being typed.
-e Unless contained in a || or && command, or the command following an if while or until
command or in the pipeline following !, if a command has a non-zero exit status, execute
the ERR trap, if set, and exit. This mode is disabled while reading profiles.
-f Disables pathname expansion.
-h Obsolete; no effect.
-k All variable assignment arguments are placed in the environment for a command, not just
those that precede the command name.
-m Background jobs will run in a separate process group and a line will print upon
completion. The exit status of background jobs is reported in a completion message. A
pipeline will not terminate until all component commands of the pipeline have terminated.
On systems with job control, this option is turned on automatically for interactive
shells.
-n Read commands and check them for syntax errors, but do not execute them. Ignored for
interactive shells.
-o The following argument can be one of the following option names:
allexport
Same as -a.
backslashctrl
The backslash character \ escapes the next control character in the emacs built-in
editor and the next erase or kill character in the vi built-in editor. On by
default.
bgnice All background jobs are run at a lower priority. This is the default mode.
braceexpand
Same as -B.
emacs Activates the emacs-style command line editor. See Emacs Editing Mode above.
errexit Same as -e.
functrace
Causes the -x option's state and the DEBUG trap action to be inherited by
functions defined using the function keyword (see Functions above) instead of
being reset to default. Changes made to them within the function do not propagate
back to the parent scope. Similarly, this option also causes the DEBUG trap
action to be inherited by subshells.
globcasedetect
When this option is turned on, globbing (see Pathname Expansion above) and file
name listing and completion (see In-line Editing Options above) automatically
become case-insensitive on file systems where the difference between upper- and
lowercase is ignored for file names. This is transparently determined for each
directory, so a path pattern that spans multiple file systems can be part case-
sensitive and part case-insensitive. In more precise terms, each slash-separated
path name component pattern p is treated as ~(i:p) if its parent directory exists
on a case-insensitive file system. This option is only present on operating
systems that support case-insensitive file systems.
globstar
Same as -G.
gmacs Activates the emacs-style command line editor with modified ^T. See Emacs Editing
Mode above.
histexpand
Same as -H.
histreedit
If a history expansion (see -H) fails, the command line is reloaded into the next
prompt's edit buffer, allowing corrections.
histverify
The results of a history expansion (see -H) are not immediately executed.
Instead, the expanded line is loaded into the next prompt's edit buffer, allowing
further changes.
ignoreeof
An interactive shell will not exit on end-of-file. The command exit must be used.
keyword Same as -k.
letoctal
The let command allows octal numbers starting with 0. On by default if ksh is
invoked as sh or rsh.
markdirs
All directory names resulting from pathname expansion have a trailing / appended.
monitor Same as -m.
multiline
The built-in editors will use multiple lines on the screen for lines that are
longer than the width of the screen. This may not work for all terminals. The
shell uses the system default tput(1) command to obtain the terminal escape codes
for the necessary operations. Multi-line editing is disabled if this fails. On
most systems, setting the TERM variable to your terminal's type and exporting it
corrects this situation. The multiline option is ineffectual on systems whose
tput(1) command supports neither terminfo(5) nor termcap(5) capability names.
noclobber
Same as -C.
noexec Same as -n.
noglob Same as -f.
nolog Obsolete; has no effect.
notify Same as -b.
nounset Same as -u.
pipefail
The exit status of the entire pipeline will be that of the last component command
that exited with a non-zero exit status, or zero if no command exited with a non-
zero exit status. The shell will wait for all component commands of the pipeline
to terminate, instead of only waiting for the last component command.
posix Enables the POSIX standard mode for maximum compatibility with other compliant
shells. At the moment that the posix option is turned on, it also turns on
letoctal and turns off -B/braceexpand; the reverse is done when posix is turned
back off. (These options can still be controlled independently in between.)
Furthermore, the posix option is automatically turned on upon invocation if the
shell is invoked as sh or rsh, or if -o posix or --posix is specified on the shell
invocation command line, or when executing scripts without a #! path with this
option active in the invoking shell. In that case, the invoked shell will not
import type attributes for variables (such as integer or left/right justify) from
the environment.
In addition, while on, the posix option
• disables exporting variable type attributes to the environment for other ksh
processes to import;
• disallows brace expansion on the results of unquoted expansions (if the
-B/braceexpand option is turned back on);
• disables the special handling of repeated isspace class characters in the IFS
variable;
• causes file descriptors > 2 to be left open when invoking another program;
• disables the &> redirection shorthand;
• disables fast filescan loops of type while inputredirection ;do list ;done;
• makes the <> redirection operator default to redirecting standard input if no
file descriptor number precedes it;
• causes the shell to use a standard UNIX pipe(2) instead of a socketpair(2) to
connect commands in a pipeline (when reading directly from a pipeline, the
<#pattern and <##pattern redirection operators will not work and the -n option
to the read built-in will not return early when reading from a slow device);
• disables the special floating point constants Inf and NaN in arithmetic
evaluation so that, e.g., $((inf)) and $((nan)) refer to the variables by those
names;
• enables the recognition of a leading zero as introducing an octal number in all
arithmetic evaluation contexts, except in the let built-in while letoctal is
off;
• disables zero-padding of seconds in the output of the time and times built-ins;
• stops the . command (but not source) from looking up functions defined with the
function syntax;
• disables the recognition of unexpanded shell arithmetic expressions for the
numerical conversion specifiers of the printf built-in command, causing them to
print a warning for operands that are not valid decimal, 0x-prefixed
hexadecimal or 0-prefixed octal numbers;
• disables the special handling of /dev/fd/n in file existence and access test
operators in test/[ and [[, causing these to operate on the file /dev/fd/n in
the file system;
• disables the recognition of unexpanded shell arithmetic expressions in the
numerical comparison operators -eq, -ne, -gt, -ge, -lt and -le of the test/[
built-in command, causing them to accept only decimal numbers as operands;
• changes the test/[ built-in command to make its deprecated expr1 -a expr2 and
expr1 -o expr2 operators work even if expr1 equals "!" or "(" (which means the
nonstandard unary -a file and -o option operators cannot be directly negated
using ! or wrapped in parentheses); and
• disables a hack that makes test -t ([ -t ]) equivalent to test -t 1 ([ -t 1 ]).
privileged
Same as -p.
showme When enabled, simple commands or pipelines preceded by a semicolon (;) will be
displayed as if the xtrace option were enabled but will not be executed.
Otherwise, the leading ; will be ignored.
trackall
Same as -h.
verbose Same as -v.
vi Activates the vi-style command line editor, initially in input mode. See Vi
Editing Mode above.
viraw Obsolete; has no effect.
xtrace Same as -x.
If no option name is supplied, then the current option settings are printed.
-p Disables processing of the $HOME/.profile file and uses the file /etc/suid_profile instead
of the ENV file. This mode is on whenever the effective UID (GID) is not equal to the
real UID (GID). Turning this off causes the effective UID and GID to be set to the real
UID and GID.
-r Enables the restricted shell. This option cannot be unset once set.
-s Sort the positional parameters lexicographically.
-t (Obsolete). Exit after reading and executing one command.
-u Treat unset parameters as an error when substituting. $@ and $* are exempt.
-v Print shell input lines as they are read.
-x Print commands and their arguments as they are executed.
-- Do not change any of the options; useful in setting $1 to a value beginning with -. If no
arguments follow this option then the positional parameters are unset.
As an obsolete feature, if the first arg is - then the -x and -v options are turned off and the
next arg is treated as the first argument. Using + rather than - causes these options to be
turned off. These options can also be used upon invocation of the shell. The current set of
options may be found in $-. Unless -A is specified, the remaining arguments are positional
parameters and are assigned, in order, to $1 $2 .... If no arguments are given, then the names
and values of all variables are printed on the standard output.
† shift [ n ]
The positional parameters from $n+1 ... are renamed $1 ... , default n is 1. The parameter n can
be any arithmetic expression that evaluates to a non-negative number less than or equal to $#.
sleep [ -s ] duration
Suspends execution for the number of decimal seconds or fractions of a second given by duration.
duration can be an integer, floating point value or ISO 8601 duration specifying the length of
time to sleep. The option -s causes the sleep builtin to terminate when it receives any signal.
If duration is not specified in conjunction with -s, sleep will wait for a signal indefinitely.
source name [ arg ... ]
Same as ., except it is not treated as a special built-in command.
stop job ...
Sends a SIGSTOP signal to one or more processes specified by job, suspending them until they
receive SIGCONT. The same as kill -s STOP.
suspend
Sends a SIGSTOP signal to the main shell process, suspending the script or child shell session
until it receives SIGCONT (for instance, when typing fg in the parent shell). Equivalent to
kill -s STOP "$$", except that it accepts no operands and refuses to suspend a login shell.
test expression
The test and [ commands execute conditional expressions similar to those specified for the [[
compound command under Conditional Expressions above, but with several important differences. The
=, == and != operators test for string (in)equality without pattern matching; == is nonstandard
and unportable. The && and || operators are not available. Instead, the -a and -o binary operators
can be used, but they are fraught with pitfalls due to grammatical ambiguities and therefore
deprecated in favor of invoking separate test commands. Most importantly, as test and [ are simple
regular commands, field splitting and pathname expansion are performed on all their arguments and
all aspects of regular shell grammar (such as redirection) remain active. This is usually harmful,
so care must be taken to quote arguments and expansions to avoid this. To avoid the many pitfalls
arising from these issues, the [[ compound command should be used instead. The primary purpose of
the test and [ commands is compatibility with other shells that lack [[.
The test/[ command does not parse options except if there are two arguments and the second is --.
To access the inline documentation with an option such as --man, you need one of the forms
test --man -- or [ --man -- ].
times Displays the accumulated user and system CPU times, one line with the times used by the shell and
another with those used by all of the shell's child processes. No options are supported. Seconds
are zero-padded unless the posix shell option is on.
† trap [ -p ] [ action ] [ sig ] ...
The -p option causes the trap action associated with each trap as specified by the arguments to be
printed with appropriate quoting. Otherwise, action will be processed as if it were an argument
to eval when the shell receives signal(s) sig. Each sig can be given as a number or as the name
of the signal. Trap commands are executed in order of signal number. Any attempt to set a trap
on a signal that was ignored on entry to the current shell is ineffective. If action is omitted
and the first sig is a number, or if action is -, then the trap(s) for each sig are reset to their
original values. If action is the empty string, then this signal is ignored by the shell and by
the commands it invokes. If sig is ERR then action will be executed whenever a command has a non-
zero exit status. If sig is DEBUG then action will be executed before each command. The variable
.sh.command will contain the current command line when action is running, in the same format as
the output generated by the xtrace option (minus the preceding PS4 prompt). If the exit status of
the trap is 2 the command will not be executed. If the exit status of the trap is 255 and inside
a function or a dot script, the function or dot script will return. If sig is 0 or EXIT and the
trap statement is executed inside the body of a function defined with the function name syntax,
then the command action is executed after the function completes. If sig is 0 or EXIT for a trap
set outside any function then the command action is executed on exit from the shell. If sig is
KEYBD, then action will be executed whenever a key is read while in emacs, gmacs, or vi mode. The
trap command with no arguments prints a list of commands associated with each signal number.
An exit or return without an argument in a trap action will preserve the exit status of the command that
invoked the trap.
true Does nothing, and exits 0. Used with while for infinite loops.
type [ -afpPqt ] name ...
The same as whence -v.
†‡ typeset [ ±ACHSbflmnprstux ] [ ±EFLRXZi[n] ] [ +-M [ mapname ] ] [ -T [ tname=(assign_list) ] ] [
-h str ] [ -a [ [type] ] ] [ vname[=value ] ] ...
Sets attributes and values for shell variables and functions. When invoked inside a function
defined with the function name syntax, a new instance of the variable vname is created, and the
variable's value and type are restored when the function completes. The following list of
attributes may be specified:
-A Declares vname to be an associative array. Subscripts are strings rather than arithmetic
expressions.
-C Causes each vname to be a compound variable. If value names a compound variable, it is
copied into vname. Otherwise, the empty compound value is assigned to vname.
-a Declares vname to be an indexed array. This is the default. Subscripts are numerical and
start at 0. To make it possible to use alphanumeric enumeration constants of a given type
as subscripts, an option value of the form [type] can be specified (including the
surrounding square brackets), which should be quoted to avoid pathname expansion), where
type must be the name of an enumeration type created with the enum command.
-E Declares vname to be a double precision floating point number. If n is non-zero, it
defines the number of significant figures that are used when expanding vname. Otherwise,
ten significant figures will be used.
-F Declares vname to be a double precision floating point number. If n is non-zero, it
defines the number of places after the decimal point that are used when expanding vname.
Otherwise ten places after the decimal point will be used.
-H This option provides UNIX to host-name file mapping on non-UNIX machines.
-L Left justify and remove leading blanks from value. If n is non-zero, it defines the width
of the field, otherwise it is determined by the width of the value of first assignment.
When the variable is assigned to, it is filled on the right with blanks or truncated, if
necessary, to fit into the field. The -R option is turned off.
-M Use the character mapping mapping defined by wctrans(3). such as tolower and toupper when
assigning a value to each of the specified operands. When mapping is specified and there
are not operands, all variables that use this mapping are written to standard output. When
mapping is omitted and there are no operands, all mapped variables are written to standard
output.
-R Right justify and fill with leading blanks. If n is non-zero, it defines the width of the
field, otherwise it is determined by the width of the value of first assignment. The field
is left filled with blanks or truncated from the end if the variable is reassigned. The -L
option is turned off.
-S When used within the assign_list of a type definition, it causes the specified subvariable
to be shared by all instances of the type. When used inside a function defined with the
function reserved word, the specified variables will have function static scope.
Otherwise, the variable is unset prior to processing the assignment list.
-T If followed by tname, it creates a type named by tname using the compound assignment
assign_list to tname. Otherwise, it writes all the type definitions to standard output.
-X Declares vname to be a double precision floating point number and expands using the %a
format of ISO-C99. If n is non-zero, it defines the number of hex digits after the radix
point that is used when expanding vname. The default is 10.
-Z Right justify and fill with leading zeros if the first non-blank character is a digit and
the -L option has not been set. Remove leading zeros if the -L option is also set. If n
is non-zero, it defines the width of the field, otherwise it is determined by the width of
the value of first assignment.
-f The names refer to function names rather than variable names. No assignments can be made
and the only other valid options are -S, -t, -u and -x. The -S can be used with discipline
functions defined in a type to indicate that the function is static. For a static
function, the same method will be used by all instances of that type no matter which
instance references it. In addition, it can only use value of variables from the original
type definition. These discipline functions cannot be redefined in any type instance. The
-t option turns on execution tracing for this function. The -u option causes this function
to be marked undefined. The FPATH variable will be searched to find the function
definition when the function is referenced. If no options other than -f is specified, then
the function definition will be displayed on standard output. If +f is specified, then a
line containing the function name followed by a shell comment containing the line number
and path name of the file where this function was defined, if any, is displayed. The exit
status can be used to determine whether the function is defined so that typeset -f
.sh.math.name will return 0 when math function name is defined and non-zero otherwise.
-b The variable can hold any number of bytes of data. The data can be text or binary. The
value is represented by the base64 encoding of the data. If -Z is also specified, the size
in bytes of the data in the buffer will be determined by the size associated with the -Z.
If the base64 string assigned results in more data, it will be truncated. Otherwise, it
will be filled with bytes whose value is zero. The printf format %B can be used to output
the actual data in this buffer instead of the base64 encoding of the data.
-g Forces variables to be created or modified at the global scope, even when typeset is
executed in a function defined by the function name syntax (see Functions above) or in a
name space (see Name Spaces above).
-h Used within type definitions to add information when generating information about the
subvariable on the man page. It is ignored when used outside of a type definition. When
used with -f the information is associated with the corresponding discipline function.
-i Declares vname to be represented internally as integer. The right hand side of an
assignment is evaluated as an arithmetic expression when assigning to an integer. If n is
non-zero, it defines the output arithmetic base, otherwise the output base will be ten.
-l Used with -i, -E or -F, to indicate long integer, or long float. Otherwise, all uppercase
characters are converted to lowercase. The uppercase option, -u, is turned off.
Equivalent to -M tolower .
-m Moves or renames the variable. The value is the name of a variable whose value will be
moved to vname. The original variable will be unset. Cannot be used with any other
options.
-n Declares vname to be a reference to the variable whose name is defined by the value of
variable vname. This is usually used to reference a variable inside a function whose name
has been passed as an argument. Cannot be used with other options except -g.
-p The name, attributes and values for the given vnames are written on standard output in a
form that can be used as shell input. If +p is specified, then the values are not
displayed.
-r The given vnames are marked read-only and these names cannot be changed by subsequent
assignment.
-s When given along with -i, restricts integer size to short.
-t Tags the variables. Tags are user definable and have no special meaning to the shell.
-u When given along with -i, specifies unsigned integer. Otherwise, all lowercase characters
are converted to uppercase. The lowercase option, -l, is turned off. Equivalent to -M
toupper .
-x The given vnames are marked for automatic export to the environment of subsequently-
executed commands. Variables whose names contain a . cannot be exported.
The -i, -F, -E, and -X options cannot be specified along with -R, -L, or -Z. The -b option cannot
be specified along with -L, -u, or -l. The -f, -m, -n, and -T options cannot be used together
with any other option.
Using + rather than - causes these options to be turned off. If no vname arguments are given, a
list of vnames (and optionally the values) of the variables is printed. (Using + rather than -
keeps the values from being printed.) The -p option causes typeset followed by the option letters
to be printed before each name rather than the names of the options. If any option other than -p
is given, only those variables which have all of the given options are printed. Otherwise, the
vnames and attributes of all variables that have attributes are printed.
ulimit [ -HSaMctdfkxlqenVuPpmrRbiswTv ] [ limit ]
Set or display a resource limit. The available resource limits are listed below. Many systems do
not support one or more of these limits. The limit for a specified resource is set when limit is
specified. The value of limit can be a number in the unit specified below with each resource, or
the value unlimited. The -H and -S options specify whether the hard limit or the soft limit for
the given resource is set. A hard limit cannot be increased once it is set. A soft limit can be
increased up to the value of the hard limit. If neither the H nor S option is specified, the
limit applies to both. The current resource limit is printed when limit is omitted. In this
case, the soft limit is printed unless H is specified. When more than one resource is specified,
then the limit name and unit is printed before the value.
-a Lists all of the current resource limits.
-b The socket buffer size in bytes.
-c The number of 512-byte blocks on the size of core dumps.
-d The number of K-bytes on the size of the data area.
-e The scheduling priority.
-f The number of 512-byte blocks on files that can be written by the current process or by
child processes (files of any size may be read).
-i The signal queue size.
-k The max number of kqueues created by the current user.
-l The locked address space in K-bytes.
-M The address space limit in K-bytes.
-m The number of K-bytes on the size of physical memory.
-n The number of file descriptors plus 1.
-P The max number of pseudo-terminals created by the current user.
-p The number of 512-byte blocks for pipe buffering.
-q The message queue size in K-bytes.
-R The max time a real-time process can run before blocking, in microseconds. If this limit
is exceeded the process is sent a SIGXCPU signal.
-r The max real-time priority.
-s The number of K-bytes on the size of the stack area.
-T The number of threads.
-t The number of CPU seconds to be used by each process.
-u The number of processes.
-V The number of open vnode monitors.
-v The number of K-bytes for virtual memory.
-w The swap size in K-bytes.
-x The number of file locks.
If no option is given, -f is assumed.
umask [ -S ] [ mask ]
The user file-creation mask is set to mask (see umask(2)). mask can either be an octal number or
a symbolic value as described in chmod(1). If a symbolic value is given, the new umask value is
the complement of the result of applying mask to the complement of the previous umask value. If
mask is omitted, the current value of the mask is printed. The -S option causes the mode to be
printed as a symbolic value. Otherwise, the mask is printed in octal.
unalias [ -a ] name ...
The aliases given by the list of names are removed from the alias list. The -a option causes all
the aliases to be unset.
† unset [ -fnv ] vname ...
The variables given by the list of vnames are unassigned, i.e., except for subvariables within a
type, their values and attributes are erased. For subvariables of a type, the values are reset to
the default value from the type definition. Readonly variables cannot be unset. If the -f option
is set, then the names refer to function names. If the -v option is set, then the names refer to
variable names. The -f option overrides -v. If -n is set and name is a name reference, then name
will be unset rather than the variable that it references. The default is equivalent to -v.
Unsetting LINENO, MAILCHECK, OPTARG, OPTIND, RANDOM, SECONDS, TMOUT, and _ removes their special
meaning even if they are subsequently assigned to.
wait [ job ... ]
Wait for the specified job and report its termination status. If job is not given, then all
currently active child processes are waited for. The exit status from this command is that of the
last process waited for if job is specified; otherwise it is zero. See Jobs for a description of
the format of job.
whence [ -afpPqtv ] name ...
For each name, indicate how it would be interpreted if used as a command name.
The -v option produces a more verbose report. The -f option skips the search for functions. The
-p and -P options do a path search for name even if name is an alias, a function, or a reserved
word. Both of these options turn off the -v option. The -q option causes whence to enter quiet
mode. whence will return zero if all arguments are built-ins, functions, or are programs found on
the path. The -t option only outputs the type of the given command. Like -p and -P, -t will turn
off the -v option. The -a option is similar to the -v option but causes all interpretations of
the given name to be reported.
Invocation.
If the shell is invoked by exec(2), initialization depends on argument zero ($0) as follows. If the
first character of $0 is -, or the -l option is given on the invocation command line, then the shell is
assumed to be a login shell. If the basename of the command path in $0 is rsh, rksh, or krsh, then the
shell becomes restricted. If the basename is sh or rsh, or the -o posix option is given on the
invocation command line, then the shell is initialized in full POSIX compliance mode (see the set builtin
command above for more information). After this, if the shell was assumed to be a login shell, commands
are read from /etc/profile and then from $HOME/.profile if it exists. Alternatively, the option -l
causes the shell to be treated as a login shell. Next, for interactive shells, commands are read from
the file named by ENV if the file exists, its name being determined by performing parameter expansion,
command substitution, and arithmetic expansion on the value of that environment variable. If the -s
option is not present and arg and a file by the name of arg exists, then it reads and executes this
script. Otherwise, if the first arg does not contain a /, a path search is performed on the first arg to
determine the name of the script to execute. The script arg must have execute permission and any setuid
and setgid settings will be ignored. If the script is not found on the path, arg is processed as if it
named a built-in command or function. Commands are then read as described below; the following options
are interpreted by the shell when it is invoked:
-D A list of all double quoted strings that are preceded by a $ will be printed on standard output
and the shell will exit. This set of strings will be subject to language translation when the
locale is not C or POSIX. No commands will be executed.
-E or -o rc or --rc
Read the file named by the ENV variable or by $HOME/.kshrc if not defined after the profiles. On
by default for interactive shells. Use +E, +o rc or --norc to turn off.
-c Read and execute a script from the first arg instead of a file. The second arg, if present,
becomes that script's command name ($0). Any third and further args become positional parameters
starting at $1.
-s Read and execute a script from standard input instead of a file. The command name ($0) cannot be
set. Any args become the positional parameters starting at $1. This option is forced on if no
arg is given and is ignored if -c is also specified.
-i or -o interactive or --interactive
If the -i option is present or if the shell's standard input and standard error are attached to a
terminal (as told by tcgetattr(3)), then this shell is interactive. In this case TERM is ignored
(so that kill 0 does not kill an interactive shell) and INTR is caught and ignored (so that wait
is interruptible). In all cases, QUIT is ignored by the shell.
-r or -o restricted or --restricted
If the -r option is present, the shell is a restricted shell.
The remaining options and arguments are described under the set command above. An optional - as the
first argument is ignored.
Rksh Only.
Rksh is used to set up login names and execution environments whose capabilities are more controlled than
those of the standard shell. The actions of rksh are identical to those of ksh, except that the
following are disallowed:
• unsetting the restricted option
• changing directory (see cd(1))
• setting or unsetting the value or attributes of SHELL, ENV, FPATH, or PATH
• specifying path or command names containing /
• redirecting output (>, >|, <>, and >>)
• adding or deleting built-in commands
• using command -p to invoke a command
The restrictions above are enforced after .profile and the ENV files are interpreted.
When a command to be executed is found to be a shell procedure, rksh invokes ksh to execute it. Thus, it
is possible to provide to the end-user shell procedures that have access to the full power of the
standard shell, while imposing a limited menu of commands; this scheme assumes that the end-user does not
have write and execute permissions in the same directory.
The net effect of these rules is that the writer of the .profile has complete control over user actions,
by performing guaranteed setup actions and leaving the user in an appropriate directory (probably not the
login directory).
The system administrator often sets up a directory of commands (e.g., /usr/rbin) that can be safely
invoked by rksh.
EXIT STATUS
Errors detected by the shell, such as syntax errors, cause the shell to return a non-zero exit status.
If the shell is being used non-interactively, then execution of the shell file is abandoned unless the
error occurs inside a subshell in which case the subshell is abandoned. Otherwise, the shell returns the
exit status of the last command executed (see also the exit command above). Run time errors detected by
the shell are reported by printing the command or function name and the error condition. If the line
number that the error occurred on is greater than one, then the line number is also printed in square
brackets ([]) after the command or function name.
FILES
/etc/profile
The system wide initialization file, executed for login shells.
$HOME/.profile
The personal initialization file, executed for login shells after /etc/profile.
$HOME/.kshrc
Default personal initialization file, executed for interactive shells when ENV is not set.
/etc/suid_profile
Alternative initialization file, executed instead of the personal initialization file when the
real and effective user or group ID do not match.
/dev/null
The null device.
SEE ALSO
cat(1), cd(1), chmod(1), cut(1), date(1), echo(1), emacs(1), env(1), gmacs(1), grep(1), stty(1), test(1),
umask(1), vi(1), dup(2), exec(2), fork(2), getpwnam(3), ioctl(2), lseek(2), paste(1), pathconf(2),
pipe(2), sysconf(3), umask(2), ulimit(2), wait(2), strftime(3), wctrans(3), rand(3), profile(5),
environ(7).
Morris I. Bolsky and David G. Korn, The New KornShell Command and Programming Language, Prentice Hall,
1995.
POSIX - Part 2: Shell and Utilities, IEEE Std 1003.2-1992, ISO/IEC 9945-2, IEEE, 1993.
CAVEATS
If a command is executed, and then a command with the same name is installed in a directory in the search
path before the directory where the original command was found, the shell will continue to exec the
original command. Use the hash command or the -t option of the alias command to correct this situation.
Using the hist built-in command within a compound command will cause the whole command to disappear from
the history file.
The built-in command . file reads the whole file before any commands are executed. Therefore, alias and
unalias commands in the file will not apply to any commands defined in the file.
Traps are not processed while a job is waiting for a foreground process. Thus, a trap on CHLD won't be
executed until the foreground job terminates.
In locales that use a multibyte character set such as UTF-8, the KEYBD trap is only triggered for ASCII
characters (1-127).
It is a good idea to leave a space after the comma operator in arithmetic expressions to prevent the
comma from being interpreted as the decimal point character in certain locales.
KSH(1)