Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Why Use the Command Line? -- What This Book Is About -- Who Should Read This Book -- What's in This Book -- How to Read This Book -- Prerequisites -- Part 1: Learning the Shell -- 1: What Is the Shell? -- Terminal Emulators -- Your First Keystrokes -- Command History -- Cursor Movement -- Try Some Simple Commands -- Ending a Terminal Session -- 2: Navigation -- Understanding the Filesystem Tree -- The Current Working Directory -- Listing the Contents of a Directory -- Changing the Current Working Directory -- Absolute Pathnames -- Relative Pathnames -- Some Helpful Shortcuts -- 3: Exploring the System -- More Fun with ls -- Options and Arguments -- A Longer Look at Long Format -- Determining a File's Type with file -- Viewing File Contents with less -- A Guided Tour -- Symbolic Links -- 4: Manipulating Files and Directories -- Wildcards -- mkdir-Create Directories -- cp-Copy Files and Directories -- mv-Move and Rename Files -- rm-Remove Files and Directories -- ln-Create Links -- Hard Links -- Symbolic Links -- Let's Build a Playground -- Creating Directories -- Copying Files -- Moving and Renaming Files -- Creating Hard Links -- Creating Symbolic Links -- Removing Files and Directories -- Final Note -- 5: Working with Commands -- What Exactly Are Commands? -- Identifying Commands -- type-Display a Command's Type -- which-Display an Executable's Location -- Getting a Command's Documentation -- help-Get Help for Shell Builtins -- --help-Display Usage Information -- man-Display a Program's Manual Page -- apropos-Display Appropriate Commands -- whatis-Display a Very Brief Description of a Command -- info-Display a Program's Info Entry -- README and Other Program Documentation Files -- Creating Your Own Commands with alias -- Revisiting Old Friends -- 6: Redirection -- Standard Input, Output, and Error.

Redirecting Standard Output -- Redirecting Standard Error -- Redirecting Standard Output and Standard Error to One File -- Disposing of Unwanted Output -- Redirecting Standard Input -- Pipelines -- Filters -- uniq-Report or Omit Repeated Lines -- wc-Print Line, Word, and Byte Counts -- grep-Print Lines Matching a Pattern -- head/tail-Print First/Last Part of Files -- tee-Read from Stdin and Output to Stdout and Files -- Final Note -- 7: Seeing the World as the Shell Sees It -- Expansion -- Pathname Expansion -- Tilde Expansion -- Arithmetic Expansion -- Brace Expansion -- Parameter Expansion -- Command Substitution -- Quoting -- Double Quotes -- Single Quotes -- Escaping Characters -- Final Note -- 8: Advanced Keyboard Tricks -- Command Line Editing -- Cursor Movement -- Modifying Text -- Cutting and Pasting (Killing and Yanking) Text -- Completion -- Using History -- Searching History -- History Expansion -- Final Note -- 9: Permissions -- Owners, Group Members, and Everybody Else -- Reading, Writing, and Executing -- chmod-Change File Mode -- Octal Representation -- Symbolic Representation -- Setting File Mode with the GUI -- umask-Set Default Permissions -- Changing Identities -- su-Run a Shell with Substitute User and Group IDs -- sudo-Execute a Command as Another User -- chown-Change File Owner and Group -- chgrp-Change Group Ownership -- Exercising Your Privileges -- Changing Your Password -- 10: Processes -- How a Process Works -- Viewing Processes with ps -- Viewing Processes Dynamically with top -- Controlling Processes -- Interrupting a Process -- Putting a Process in the Background -- Returning a Process to the Foreground -- Stopping (Pausing) a Process -- Signals -- Sending Signals to Processes with kill -- Sending Signals to Multiple Processes with killall -- More Process-Related Commands -- Part 2: Configuration and the Environment.

11: The Environment -- What Is Stored in the Environment? -- Examining the Environment -- Some Interesting Variables -- How Is the Environment Established? -- Login and Non-login Shells -- What's in a Startup File? -- Modifying the Environment -- Which Files Should We Modify? -- Text Editors -- Using a Text Editor -- Activating Our Changes -- Final Note -- 12: A Gentle Introduction to vi -- Why We Should Learn vi -- A Little Background -- Starting and Stopping vi -- Editing Modes -- Entering Insert Mode -- Saving Our Work -- Moving the Cursor Around -- Basic Editing -- Appending Text -- Opening a Line -- Deleting Text -- Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Text -- Joining Lines -- Search and Replace -- Searching Within a Line -- Searching the Entire File -- Global Search and Replace -- Editing Multiple Files -- Switching Between Files -- Opening Additional Files for Editing -- Copying Content from One File into Another -- Inserting an Entire File into Another -- Saving Our Work -- 13: Customizing the Prompt -- Anatomy of a Prompt -- Trying Some Alternative Prompt Designs -- Adding Color -- Moving the Cursor -- Saving the Prompt -- Final Note -- Part 3: Common Tasks and Essential Tools -- 14: Package Management -- Packaging Systems -- How a Package System Works -- Package Files -- Repositories -- Dependencies -- High- and Low-Level Package Tools -- Common Package Management Tasks -- Finding a Package in a Repository -- Installing a Package from a Repository -- Installing a Package from a Package File -- Removing a Package -- Updating Packages from a Repository -- Upgrading a Package from a Package File -- Listing Installed Packages -- Determining Whether a Package Is Installed -- Displaying Information About an Installed Package -- Finding Which Package Installed a File -- Final Note -- 15: Storage Media -- Mounting and Unmounting Storage Devices.

Viewing a List of Mounted Filesystems -- Determining Device Names -- Creating New Filesystems -- Manipulating Partitions with fdisk -- Creating a New Filesystem with mkfs -- Testing and Repairing Filesystems -- Formatting Floppy Disks -- Moving Data Directly to and from Devices -- Creating CD-ROM Images -- Creating an Image Copy of a CD-ROM -- Creating an Image from a Collection of Files -- Writing CD-ROM Images -- Mounting an ISO Image Directly -- Blanking a Rewritable CD-ROM -- Writing an Image -- Extra Credit -- 16: Networking -- Examining and Monitoring a Network -- ping-Send a Special Packet to a Network Host -- traceroute-Trace the Path of a Network Packet -- netstat-Examine Network Settings and Statistics -- Transporting Files over a Network -- ftp-Transfer Files with the File Transfer Protocol -- lftp-A Better ftp -- wget-Non-interactive Network Downloader -- Secure Communication with Remote Hosts -- ssh-Securely Log in to Remote Computers -- scp and sftp-Securely Transfer Files -- 17: Searching for Files -- locate-Find Files the Easy Way -- find-Find Files the Hard Way -- Tests -- Actions -- A Return to the Playground -- Options -- 18: Archiving and Backup -- Compressing Files -- gzip-Compress or Expand Files -- bzip2-Higher Compression at the Cost of Speed -- Archiving Files -- tar-Tape Archiving Utility -- zip-Package and Compress Files -- Synchronizing Files and Directories -- rsync-Remote File and Directory Synchronization -- Using rsync over a Network -- 19: Regular Expressions -- What Are Regular Expressions? -- grep-Search Through Text -- Metacharacters and Literals -- The Any Character -- Anchors -- Bracket Expressions and Character Classes -- Negation -- Traditional Character Ranges -- POSIX Character Classes -- POSIX Basic vs. Extended Regular Expressions -- Alternation -- Quantifiers -- ?-Match an Element Zero Times or One Time.

*-Match an Element Zero or More Times -- +-Match an Element One or More Times -- { }-Match an Element a Specific Number of Times -- Putting Regular Expressions to Work -- Validating a Phone List with grep -- Finding Ugly Filenames with find -- Searching for Files with locate -- Searching for Text with less and vim -- Final Note -- 20: Text Processing -- Applications of Text -- Documents -- Web Pages -- Email -- Printer Output -- Program Source Code -- Revisiting Some Old Friends -- cat-Concatenate Files and Print on Standard Output -- sort-Sort Lines of Text Files -- uniq-Report or Omit Repeated Lines -- Slicing and Dicing -- cut-Remove Sections from Each Line of Files -- paste-Merge Lines of Files -- join-Join Lines of Two Files on a Common Field -- Comparing Text -- comm-Compare Two Sorted Files Line by Line -- diff-Compare Files Line by Line -- patch-Apply a diff to an Original -- Editing on the Fly -- tr-Transliterate or Delete Characters -- sed-Stream Editor for Filtering and Transforming Text -- aspell-Interactive Spell Checker -- Final Note -- Extra Credit -- 21: Formatting Output -- Simple Formatting Tools -- nl-Number Lines -- fold-Wrap Each Line to a Specified Length -- fmt-A Simple Text Formatter -- pr-Format Text for Printing -- printf-Format and Print Data -- Document Formatting Systems -- The roff Family and TEX -- groff-A Document Formatting System -- Final Note -- 22: Printing -- A Brief History of Printing -- Printing in the Dim Times -- Character-Based Printers -- Graphical Printers -- Printing with Linux -- Preparing Files for Printing -- pr-Convert Text Files for Printing -- Sending a Print Job to a Printer -- lpr-Print Files (Berkeley Style) -- lp-Print Files (System V Style) -- Another Option: a2ps -- Monitoring and Controlling Print Jobs -- lpstat-Display Print System Status -- lpq-Display Printer Queue Status.

lprm and cancel-Cancel Print Jobs.