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1.3.2 Arguments to Commands

In general, arguments to Linux system commands are one of three things. Filname the name of a file which the command is to act upon. Filenames can consist of almost any character. In practice though, most file names consist of only letters A-Z,a-z, numbers 0-9 and some other characters like underscore _ period . and minus sign -. Linux is case sensitive, so Linux and LINUX would be different filenames. There are special ``meta-characters'' or ``wild card characters'' for file name matching. You can use a shorthand notation for working on groups of files at a time.

Option
this is a literal, often preceded by a minus sign (-). Long form arguments in Linux are preceded by two minus signs (-). For example rm -f and rm -force are the same command arguments the former short form the latter long form. An option modifies the behavior of a command in some way, or gives details in exactly how the command is to operate. Some options are not preceded by anything.
Expression
usually a character string, which is used as input to the command. Some are regular expressions using ``metacharacter'' strings which are used for string matching.
The general form for arguments following a command is:

command options expression filename(s)
but the exact order required by each command should be found by referring to the documentation for the specific command.

What follows are the man pages from Linux followed by some simple usage examples.

next up previous contents
Next: 1.4 Man Pages Up: 1.3 Commands Previous: 1.3.1 What is a   Contents