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LIN 6932 1
File Management with Shell
Commands
The verbose listing shows the file permissions of a given file:
-rwxr-xr-x
• directories have a "d" in the first column
• regular files have a "-".
• the remaining 9 characters indicate owner, group, and world
permissions of the file
• An "r" indicates it's readable
• "w" is writable,
• "x" is executable
A dash in the column instead of a letter means that particular
permission is turned off.
LIN 6932 2
File Management with Shell
Commands
r readable
w writable
x executable
- permission is turned off
-rwxr-xr-x
a plain file that is read-write-execute by the owner, and read-
execute by group and world.
drwx------
a directory that is read-write-execute by owner, and group and
world have no permissions at all.
LIN 6932 3
File Management with Shell
Commands
% chmod [permissions] [file]
Changes the permissions of the named file.
You can use numbers:
% chmod 755 index.html
The first number translates to permissions by the owner. The second is permissions for the group.
The third is permissions for everyone.
Number Perms
0 --- no permissions
1 --x executable only
2 -w- writable only
3 -wx writable and executable
4 r--- readable only
5 r-x readable and executable
6 rw- readable and writable
7 rwx readable, writable, and executable
LIN 6932 4
File Management with Shell
Commands
A second way of setting permissions is with letters:
LIN 6932 5
Example of a simple shell script
# This script displays the date, time,
# username and current directory.
echo "Date and time is:"
date
echo "Your username is: `whoami`"
echo "Your current directory is:"
pwd
LIN 6932 6
Example of a simple shell script
# This script displays the date, time,
# username and current directory.
echo "Date and time is:"
date
echo "Your username is: `whoami`"
echo "Your current directory is:"
pwd
LIN 6932 7
Example of a simple shell script
# This script displays the date, time,
# username and current directory.
lines beginning with a hash (#) are comments and are not interpreted
by the Shell.
LIN 6932 8
Example of a simple shell script
# This script displays the date, time,
# username and current directory.
echo "Date and time is:"
LIN 6932 9
Example of a simple shell script
# This script displays the date, time,
# username and current directory.
echo "Date and time is:"
date
echo "Your username is: `whoami`"
The backquotes (`) around the command whoami illustrate the use
of COMMAND SUBSTITUTION: To include the output from one
command within the command line for another command, enclose
the command whose output is to be included within `backquotes`.
LIN 6932 10
Executing the shell script
• Before using a file as a shell script you must change its access
permissions so that you have execute permission on the file,
otherwise the error message Permission deniedis displayed.
• To run the shell script, simply type its name at the prompt. The
commands in the script will then execute one at a time as
though you were typing them in at the terminal.
LIN 6932 11
Executing the shell script
% chmod u-x display
% display
display: Permission denied.
LIN 6932 12
Searching for something in a file
GREP
• The grep family is a collection of three related programs
for finding patterns in files. Their names are grep, fgrep,
and egrep.
• The name grep has its origin in the phrase "Get Regular
Expression and Print”
• grep is a full-blown regular-expression matcher
• fgrep = "fixed string grep” only searches for strings
• egrep = “extended grep”
LIN 6932 13
Searching for something in a file
fgrep
fgrep: the easiest (but not fastest) one to use
Syntax:
% fgrep [options] 'search string’ filenames
Interpretation:
In the name fgrep the f stands for "Fixed string", and not "Fast" (contrary
to what the man page may tell you). The fgrep program finds all the lines
in a file that contain a certain fixed string. So, for example, I could find
all occurrences of CA in the files in the current working directory simply
by typing this command:
% fgrep CA *
LIN 6932 14
Searching for something in a file
fgrep
• Like many UNIX filters, it can take as many file names as
you like to supply. And of course it permits various
adverbs that specify options; two useful ones are
• -i ignore the difference between upper case and
lower case when deciding what is a match
• -v reverse the effect of the search by outputting only
the lines that don't match
% fgrep -i CA *
% fgrep -v CA *
LIN 6932 15
Searching for something in a file
fgrep
The key limitation of fgrep is that you cannot use it to get
approximate matches, or matches of more complicated
patterns that cannot be described by just giving a fixed string.
Sometimes you are not quite sure what string you are looking
for; for example, you might know only that the word you are
seeking begins with z and ends with -ic, and had the sequence
gm in it somewhere. What you need, then, is not a program
that will find the matching lines for you if you give it the
exact string you need to find, but rather a program that can
understand a language in which you can say things like
"begins with z and ends with -ic or -ics and had gm in it
somewhere."
LIN 6932 16
Searching for something in a file
grep
called up by giving a command that has this form:
• This means, "without distinguishing between upper and lower case, search the files
shakespeare bad_phone_numbers display for lines that contain pull followed by a vowel
letter followed by an m or an n". Thus it is looking for Pullum, Pullam, Pullen,
PULLUN, pullum@grove.ufl.edu, etc., etc.
• The expression pull[aeiou][mn] is a pattern description covering the name Pullum and
most common variants of it. Thus it is looking for Pullum, Pullam, Pullen, PULLUN,
pullum@grove.ufl.edu.
• The pattern descriptions used with grep are in a language called the language of
regular expressions. This is one of the most important and fruitful developments
in modern computer science, and in order to use grep you need to understand
regular expressions thoroughly.
LIN 6932 17
Searching for something in a file
grep
There are various dialects of the regular expression language that are used by various
UNIX programs.
Here we will be talking about grep and its extended cousin egrep. (Read the excellent
summary with examples in Unix in a Nutshell, particularly chapter 6, and do man grep on
a NetBSD machine to check the details of the GNU grep that runs on those machines.
(GNU: pronounced guh-noo, approximately like canoe; launched in 1984 to develop a
complete Unix-like operating system which is free software, often referred to as LINUX)
Note that the grep that runs on other machines may be a different program, with lots of
differences in its behavior from the GNU version.
LIN 6932 18
Searching for something in a file
grep
There are various dialects of the regular expression language that are used by various
UNIX programs.
Here we will be talking about grep and its extended cousin egrep. (Read the excellent
summary with examples in Unix in a Nutshell, particularly chapter 6, and do man grep on
a NetBSD machine to check the details of the GNU grep that runs on those machines.
(GNU: pronounced guh-noo, approximately like canoe; launched in 1984 to develop a
complete Unix-like operating system which is free software, often referred to as LINUX)
Note that the grep that runs on other machines may be a different program, with lots of
differences in its behavior from the GNU version.
LIN 6932 19
Searching for something in a file
grep
• Example: “The match the phrase that begins with z at the beginning of a line and ends in -ic or -ics
at the end of the line, and it has gm in it somewhere”, is expressed in the language of regular
expressions in this form:
^z.*gm.*ics*$
• It can therefore be used in a grep command to search for a word in a dictionary where each word is
on a separate line meeting the description:
The regular expression Z is matched by any occurrence of Z. There happens to be only one line in
The Great God Pan (/class/lin6932/c6932aab/machen.txt) that matches it, namely the middle line of
these three:
Because the middle line matches the expression Z, you can fetch (a copy of) that line out of the file
like this:
% grep Z machen.txt
not proof against the Zulu assegais and typhoid fever, and so
LIN 6932 21
Searching for something in a file
grep
% fgrep Z machen.txt
fgrep would do the same thing.
But what fgrep cannot do is to call for all lines with Au possibly followed by some
other lower-case letters and then an n. That is accomplished by the regular
expression
Au[a-z]*n
The fmt command is to break the words up and put them one on each line
the tr -d '[:punct:]' command erases all punctuation, and spaces
the sort -u command sorts the search result alphabetically
LIN 6932 23
Searching for something in a file
grep
% grep 'Au[a-z]*n' machen.txt
Au[s t r a l a b r a c a d a b r a l a l i o l a s i a]n
Au[ a-z ]*n
LIN 6932 24
Searching for something in a file
Example:
grep
The zipcodes in the near vicinity of the UC campus are 95060 (Santa Cruz west of
the river), 95062 (Live Oak), 95064 (UCSC), 95065 (East Santa Cruz), 95066
(Scotts Valley).
Suppose you wanted to extract from a file called addresses, containing one full
name and address on each line, just the addresses of people living in these areas.
Assume some people type a space after CA and others don't, and some write
several spaces.
The following regular expression describes the set of zipcodes you want:
CA *9506[024-6].
This grep command will find just the lines in the file addresses that contain
zipcodes for people who live in near the campus:
% grep 'CA *9506[024-6]' addresses
LIN 6932 25
Searching for something in a file
Example:
grep
Suppose you want only the 9-digit zipcodes, that's easy too:
LIN 6932 26
Searching for something in a file
grep
Example:
Suppose you were looking to see whether there were any words
beginning with a in a file called shakespeare.
You might type
% grep a* shakespeare
LIN 6932 27
Searching for something in a file
egrep
Some simple tasks would be a bit of a chore just using grep. Suppose we wanted to add
Ben Lomond (CA 95005), Davenport (CA 95017), and Felton (CA 95018). What we need
here is the disjunction: for the 5-digit zipcodes, the strings we want will match either
CA *9506[024-6] or CA *95005 or CA *9501[78] or.
Now, we can certainly do that: we can simply call grep three separate times, and
amalgamate all the results. We cannot amalgamate all the searches into something like
CA *950[016][024-8], because that defines a set that is too big; it lets in 95004, for
example, and that's Aromas, way the other side of Watsonville.
The way to do it is to use the extended regular expressons provided by the egrep program.
In egrep, you can use parentheses to group parts of the expression and the pipe symbol to
mean or. So (AB)|C means "either AB or C", while A(B|C) means "A followed by either B
or C", and so on. Thus we could use:% egrep 'CA *950((05)|(6[024-6])|(1[78]))'
addressesThere are a few other things that egrep allows but grep does not. For example, in
egrep regular expressions you can say a+ to mean "a sequence of one or more as", or [a-z]
+ to mean "a sequence of one or more lower-case letters". In grep regular expressions you
would have to say aa* and [a-z][a-z]* respectively to get these effects.
LIN 6932 28
Searching for something in a file
egrep
The way to do it is to use the extended regular expressons provided by the egrep
program. In egrep, you can use parentheses to group parts of the expression and
the pipe symbol to mean or. So (AB)|C means "either AB or C", while A(B|C)
means "A followed by either B or C", and so on. Thus we could use:% egrep 'CA
*950((05)|(6[024-6])|(1[78]))' addressesThere are a few other things that egrep
allows but grep does not. For example, in egrep regular expressions you can say
a+ to mean "a sequence of one or more as", or [a-z]+ to mean "a sequence of one
or more lower-case letters". In grep regular expressions you would have to say aa*
and [a-z][a-z]* respectively to get these effects.
LIN 6932 29
Searching for something in a file
So we can use:
egrep
% egrep 'CA *950((05)|(6[024-6])|(1[78]))' addresses
There are a few other things that egrep allows but grep does not. For example, in
egrep regular expressions you can say a+ to mean "a sequence of one or more as",
or [a-z]+ to mean "a sequence of one or more lower-case letters". In grep regular
expressions you would have to say aa* and [a-z][a-z]* respectively to get these
effects.
LIN 6932 30
File Management with Shell
Commands
Changing to another directory
% cd .. [RETURN] go up a directory tree
% cd [DIRECTORY] [RETURN] change to a subdirectory
% cd /tmp to change to some other
directory on the system,
you must type the full path
name
LIN 6932 31
File Management with Shell
Commands
• Create a directory
% mkdir [DIRECTORY.NAME] [RETURN]
• Remove a directory
% rmdir [DIRECTORY.NAME] [RETURN]
LIN 6932 32
Searching for something in a file
> cd ..
> cd c6932aab
> ls
display shakespeare
LIN 6932 33
Searching for something in a file
% grep [options] pattern filenames
% fgrep [options] string filenames
LIN 6932 34
Searching for something in a file
with GREP
% grep -inw ”thou" shakespeare
find all instances of the word ”though" in the file “shakespeare”, case-
insensitive but whole words and display the line numbers
LIN 6932 35
Grep
LIN 6932 36
Grep
LIN 6932 37
Egrep
The version of grep that supports the full set of
operators mentioned above is generally called egrep
(for extended grep)
LIN 6932 38
Regular Expressions
• Different from wildcard metacharacters
– Wildcard metacharacters interpreted by shell;
regexps interpreted by text tools
– Wildcard metacharacters match characters in
filenames; regexps match characters within text
files
– More regexps than wildcard metacharacters
• Common and extended regexps
Linux+ Guide to Linux 39
Certification, 2e
Regular Expressions (continued)