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A summary of the UNIX commands
Home Documentation Smile Computing Working with external codes Using a UNIX executable A summary of the UNIX commands  
Developer Tools or not Developer Tools?
Most of the commands presented here are included in the standard install of Mac OS X. However, some commands are installed only if you install the Developer Tools: make sure to test your script on a machine without the Developer Tools installed if you expect to distribute it.
More documentation?
One of the shell commands, man, is to provide documentation for the others (and itself). do shell script "man somecommand" outputs the documentation for the command, however not under a very legible format. Use Shelp instead (in the Scripting sub-section of the User scripts menu): enter the command in the text field then click man.
Alternately, you can make the documentation of a command into a well-formatted pdf with the following script, which was posted in its original form by an anonymous contributor at macosxhints and which came to us thanks to Adam Bell, John Delacour, and Shane Stanley.
set x to "ls" -- replace with any command
do shell script "cd /tmp;man -t " & x & " > " & x & ".ps; open -a preview " & x & ".ps"

About making the commands' manuals into nice documents see also: http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/cli/pretty-print_manual_pages_as_ps_pdf_or_html and http://bbs.applescript.net/viewtopic.php?pid=50757#p50757

Main section: shell commands, sorted (use the tooltip for the command's syntax in the synoptic form)
SSL
openssl OpenSSL command line tool
version print OpenSSL version information
file editing
cat concatenate and print files
cmp compare two files
colrm remove columns from a file
column columnate lists
comm select or reject lines common to two files
cut select portions of each line of a file
diff find differences between two files
diff3 find differences between three files
diffpp pretty-print diff outputs with GNU enscript
diffstat make histogram from diff-output
head display first lines of a file
lam laminate files
look display lines beginning with a given string
md5 calculate a message-digest fingerprint (checksum) for a file
merge three-way file merge
paste merge corresponding or subsequent lines of files
patch apply a diff file to an original
rev reverse lines of a file
sdiff find differences between two files and merge interactively
sort sort lines of text files
split split a file into pieces
strings find the printable strings in a object, or other binary, file
tail display the last part of a file
tr translate characters
uniq report or filter out repeated lines in a file
col filter reverse line feeds from input
expand expand tabs to spaces
unexpand stacks spaces into tabs
grep print lines matching a pattern
egrep print lines matching a pattern
fgrep print lines matching a pattern
sliceprint slice documents with long lines
wc word, line, and byte count
file handling
CpMac copy files preserving metadata and forks
GetFileInfo get attributes of HFS+ files
MvMac move files while preserving metadata and forks
SetFile set attributes of HFS+ files
basename return filename portion of pathname
dirname return directory portion of pathname
chflags change file flags
chgrp change group
chmod change file modes
chown change file owner and group
cp copy files
dd convert and copy a file
ditto copy files and directories to a destination directory
file determine file type
find walk a file hierarchy
fstat file status
hdiutil manipulate disk images
locate find files
mktemp make temporary file name (unique)
mv move files
rcp remote file copy
touch change file access and modification times
mkdir make directories
rm remove directory entries
unlink remove directory entries
rmdir remove directories
test, [ condition evaluation utility
mkfile create a file
administration
disable stop printers and classes
enable start printers and classes
du display disk usage statistics
lp print files cancel
lpoptions display or set printer options and defaults
lpq show printer queue status
lpr print files
lprm cancel print jobs
pr print files
defaults access the Mac OS X user defaults system
df display free disk space
id return user identity
kill terminate or signal a process
killall kill processes by name
ls list directory contents
machine print machine type
plutil property list utility
ps process status
quota display disk usage and limits
sleep suspend execution for an interval of time
cron daemon to execute scheduled commands (Vixie Cron)
lookupd directory services information daemon
mount_afp mount an afp (AppleShare) filesystem
reboot restarting the system
halt stopping the system
shutdown close down the system at a given time
internet
curl get a URL with FTP, TELNET, LDAP, GOPHER, DICT, FILE, HTTP or HTTPS syntax
ftp Internet file transfer program
logresolve resolve hostnames for IP-adresses in Apache logfiles
natd Network Address Translation daemon
tftp trivial file transfer program
fetchmail fetch mail from a POP, IMAP, ETRN, or ODMR-capable server
formail mail (re)formatter
from print names of those who have sent mail
whois Internet user name directory service
host looks for information about Internet hosts
mail send and receive mail
mailq print the mail queue
procmail autonomous mail processor
sendmail an electronic mail transport agent
programming
heap List all the malloc-allocated buffers in the process's heap
osacompile compile OSA scripts
osascript execute OSA scripts
computing
bc An arbitrary precision calculator language
dc an arbitrary precision calculator
neqn format equations for ascii output
units conversion program
scheduling
calendar reminder service
time & date
date display or set date and time
timed time server daemon
zdump time zone dumper
zic time zone compiler
ac display connect time accounting
uptime show how long system has been running
java
jdb Java debugger
policytool graphical tool for managing Java policy files
tnameserv Java IDL name server starter script
appletviewer Java applet viewer
jar Java archive tool
java Java interpreter
javac Java compiler
javadoc Java API documentation generator
javah C header and stub file generator
javap Java class file disassembler
jikes java source to bytecode compiler
native2ascii native to ASCII converter
rmic Java RMI stub compiler
rmiregistry Java remote object registry
serialver serial version command
extcheck jar conflict detection utility
jarsigner JAR signing and verification tool
compressions
bzcmp compare bzip2 compressed files
bzdiff compare bzip2 compressed files
bzgrep search possibly bzip2 compressed files for a regular expression
bzfgrep search possibly bzip2 compressed files for a regular expression
bzegrep search possibly bzip2 compressed files for a regular expression
bzip2 a block-sorting file compressor, v1.0.2 bzcat
bunzip2 a block-sorting file compressor, v1.0.2 bzcat
bzmore file perusal filter for crt viewing of bzip2 compressed text
bzless file perusal filter for crt viewing of bzip2 compressed text
compress uncompress compress and expand data
gzexe compress executable files in place
gzip compress or expand files
gunzip compress or expand files
zcat compress or expand files
zcmp compare compressed files
zdiff compare compressed files
zforce force a '.gz' extension on all gzip files
zgrep search possibly compressed files for a regular expression
zmore file perusal filter for crt viewing of compressed text
znew recompress .Z files to .gz files
perl
perlamiga Perl under Amiga s-1OSs0
perlapi autogenerated documentation for the perl public s-1APIs0
perlapio perl's s-1IOs0 abstraction interface
perlbook Perl book information
perlboot Beginner's Object-Oriented Tutorial
perlbot Bag'o Object Tricks (the s-1BOTs0)
perlbug how to submit bug reports on Perl
perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
perlcc frontend for perl compiler
perlcompile Introduction to the Perl Compiler-Translator
perlcygwin Perl for Cygwin
perldata Perl data types
perldbmfilter Perl s-1DBMs0 Filters
perldebguts Guts of Perl debugging
perldebug Perl debugging
perldelta what's new for perl v5.6.0
perldelta what's new for perl5.004
perldelta what's new for perl5.005
perldiag various Perl diagnostics
perldoc Look up Perl documentation in pod format
perldos Perl under s-1DOSs0, W31, W95.
perldsc Perl Data Structures Cookbook
perlembed how to embed perl in your C program
perlfaq frequently asked questions about Perl ($Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:40 $)
perlfaq1 General Questions About Perl ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:40 $)
perlfaq2 Obtaining and Learning about Perl ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:40 $)
perlfaq3 Programming Tools ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:40 $)
perlfaq4 Data Manipulation ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:41 $)
perlfaq5 Files and Formats ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:41 $)
perlfaq6 Regexes ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:42 $)
perlfaq7 Perl Language Issues ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:42 $)
perlfaq8 System Interaction ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:43 $)
perlfaq9 Networking ($Revision: 1.2 $, f(CW$Date: 2002/03/14 09:01:43 $)
perlfilter Source Filters
perlfork Perl's fork() emulation
perlform Perl formats
perlfunc Perl builtin functions
perlguts Introduction to the Perl s-1APIs0
perlhack How to hack at the Perl internals
perlhist the Perl history records
perlhpux Perl version 5 on Hewlett-Packard Unix (s-1HP-UXs0) systems
perlintern autogenerated documentation of purely internal Perl functions
perlipc Perl interprocess communication (signals, fifos, pipes, safe subprocesses, sockets, and semaphores)
perllexwarn Perl Lexical Warnings
perllocale Perl locale handling (internationalization and localization)
perllol Manipulating Arrays of Arrays in Perl
perlmachten Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems
perlmod Perl modules (packages and symbol tables)
perlmodinstall Installing s-1CPANs0 Modules
perlmodlib constructing new Perl modules and finding existing ones
perlnumber semantics of numbers and numeric operations in Perl
perlobj Perl objects
perlop Perl operators and precedence
perlopentut tutorial on opening things in Perl
perlos2 Perl under s-1OS/2s0, s-1DOSs0, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT
perlos390 building and installing Perl for s-1OS/390s0
perlpod plain old documentation
perlport Writing portable Perl
perlre Perl regular expressions
perlref Perl references and nested data structures
perlreftut Mark's very short tutorial about references
perlrun how to execute the Perl interpreter
perlsec Perl security
perlstyle Perl style guide
perlsub Perl subroutines
perlsyn Perl syntax
perlthrtut tutorial on threads in Perl
perltie how to hide an object class in a simple variable
perltoc perl documentation table of contents
perltodo Perl s-1TO-DOs0 List
perltoot Tom's object-oriented tutorial for perl
perltootc Tom's s-1OOs0 Tutorial for Class Data in Perl
perltrap Perl traps for the unwary
perlunicode Unicode support in Perl
perlvar Perl predefined variables
perlvms VMS-specific documentation for Perl
perlwin32 Perl under Win32
perlxs s-1XSs0 language reference manual
pl2pm Rough tool to translate Perl4 .pl files to Perl5 .pm modules
pl2pm Rough tool to translate Perl4 .pl files to Perl5 .pm modules
splain Perl compiler pragma to force verbose warning diagnostics splain
diagnostics Perl compiler pragma to force verbose warning diagnostics splain
xsubpp compiler to convert Perl s-1XSs0 code into C code
a2p Awk to Perl translator
dprofpp display perl profile data
find2perl translate find command lines to Perl code
h2ph convert .h C header files to .ph Perl header files
h2xs convert .h C header files to Perl extensions
s2p Sed to Perl translator
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