The bash shell

A shell is a user interface for accessing system resources and executing commands. One of the most commonly used shells is the Bourne Again SHell, or bash. By default, when you log into the Research Computing systems you are operating in a bash shell.

Some commonly used bash commands:

• man [command] -- Show the manual pages for a given [command]
• touch -- Create a basic text file
• mkdir -- Create a folder / directory
• ls -- List files in a directory
• cd -- Change directory
• pwd -- Show current directory
• cat -- Concatenate files and print on the standard output Commands are typically issued with the following format:

command [options] [arguments]