As unix/linux systems added better multiprocessing and windowing systems, this terminal concept was abstracted into software. Now you have programs such as Gnome Terminal which …

What do the following environment variables in Linux mean? What is $* (dollar sign followed by an asterisk)? What is $# (dollar sign next to a hash mark/number sign/octothorpe/pound sign)?

PowerShell is superficially similar to Unix shells. PowerShell has aliases for many of the commands you are used to in Unix, like ls, rm, cp, mv, etc. However, the way that the cmdlets …

The UNIX prompt uses a $ symbol to indicate that your input is expected. I was wondering why this symbol was chosen—if there is a reason. Dollar just seems a little unexpected. A > …

4 Normally a unix shell will have the following key mappings control-C => SIGINT (interupt) control-Z => SIGTSTP (terminal stop / suspend) sometimes there is also control-y => delayed …

I use Linux and a Mac, and I'll be teaching some command line stuff soon. What can I install on Windows to give me a terminal window most similar to a basic Mac/Linux Bash shell? I would …

I know that the > sign is used for output redirection in the command line, but I'm having trouble finding something that explains the use of 2>&1 in the command line. For example: curl ...

The shell has the functionality to background the process, but this is a relationship between the shell and the process. The process itself doesn't really have the concept of background or …

I would like to display current path in sh prompt (not bash shell), which currently just shows "#", I tried with introducing this env PS1="$(whoami)@$(hostname):$(pwd)" and set …

65 When a file is executed, how does Unix search for it? If there are multiple executable files in PATH with the same name, which one is preferred? Is the current directory included in the …