All rights reserved.
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Now in its twentieth year, the USENIX Association, the UNIX and Advanced Computing Systems professional and technical organization, is a not-for-profit membership association of individuals and institutions with an interest in UNIX and UNIX-like systems, and, by extension, C++, X windows, and other advanced tools and technologies.
USENIX and its members are dedicated to:
USENIX publishes a journal (Computing Systems), a newsletter (;login:), Proceedings from its frequent Conferences and Symposia, and a Book Series.
SAGE, The Systems Administrators Guild, a Special Technical Group with the USENIX Association, is dedicated to the advancement of system administration as a profession.
SAGE brings together systems managers and administrators to:
3 4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents .nr PS 24 .nr VS 32
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1 Berkeley Software Distribution .nr PS 18 .nr VS 26
1 April, 1994 .nr PS 18 .nr VS 20
2 Computer Systems Research Group University of California at Berkeley .nr PS 12 .nr VS 14.5
4 A USENIX Association Book O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 103 Morris Street, Suite A Sebastopol, CA 94572 .bp .nr PS 9 .nr VS 11
First Printing, 1994
Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Other than the specific manual pages and documents listed below as copyrighted by AT&T, redistribution and use of this manual in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
\s-1THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.\s+1
Documents USD:1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 29 are copyright 1979, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Incorporated. Holders of \x'-1p'UNIX\v'-4p'\s-3TM\s0\v'4p'/32V, System III, or System V software licenses are permitted to copy these documents, or any portion of them, as necessary for licensed use of the software, provided this copyright notice and statement of permission are included. Documents USD:8, 14, and 28 are part of the user contributed software.
The views and conclusions contained in this manual are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Regents of the University of California.
This book was printed and bound in the United States of America.
Distributed by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 1-56592-076-7 .bp .OH '\s10Contents''- % -\s0' .EH '\s10- % -''Contents\s0' \& .nr PS 24 .nr VS 26
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.tl 'Introduction''ix' Getting Started .tl 'Unix for Beginners - Second Edition''tabbed 1' .QP An introduction to the most basic uses of the system. .tl 'Learn - Computer-Aided Instruction on UNIX (Second Edition)''tabbed 2' .QP Describes a computer-aided instruction program that walks new users through the basics of files, the editor, and document prepararation software. Basic Utilities .tl 'An Introduction to the UNIX Shell''tabbed 3' .QP Steve Bourne's introduction to the capabilities of sh, a command interpreter especially popular for writing shell scripts. .tl 'An Introduction to the C shell''tabbed 4' .QP This introduction to csh, (a command interpreter popular for interactive work) describes many commonly used UNIX commands, assumes little prior knowledge of UNIX, and has a glossary useful for beginners. .tl 'DC - An Interactive Desk Calculator''tabbed 5' .QP A super HP calculator, if you do not need floating point. .tl 'BC - An Arbitrary Precision Desk-Calculator Language''tabbed 6' .QP A front end for DC that provides infix notation, control flow, and built-in functions. Communicating with the World .tl 'Mail Reference Manual''tabbed 7' .QP Complete details on one of the programs for sending and reading your mail. .tl 'The Rand MH Message Handling System''tabbed 8' .QP This system for managing your computer mail uses lots of small programs, instead of one large one. Text Editing .tl 'A Tutorial Introduction to the Unix Text Editor''tabbed 9' .QP An easy way to get started with the line editor, ed. .tl 'Advanced Editing on Unix''tabbed 10' .QP The next step. .tl 'An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi''tabbed 11' .QP The document to learn to use the vi screen editor. .tl 'Ex Reference Manual (Version 3.7)''tabbed 12' .QP The final reference for the ex editor. .tl 'Vi Reference Manual''tabbed 13' .QP The definitive reference for the nvi editor. .tl 'Jove Manual for UNIX Users''tabbed 14' .QP Jove is a small, self-documenting, customizable display editor, based on EMACS. A plausible alternative to vi. .tl 'SED - A Non-interactive Text Editor''tabbed 15' .QP Describes a one-pass variant of ed useful as a filter for processing large files. .tl 'AWK - A Pattern Scanning and Processing Language (Second Edition)''tabbed 16' .QP A program for data selection and transformation. Document Preparation .tl 'Typing Documents on UNIX: Using the -ms Macros with Troff and Nroff''tabbed 17' .QP Describes and gives examples of the basic use of the typesetting tools and ``-ms'', a frequently used package of formatting requests that make it easier to lay out most documents. .tl 'A Revised Version of -ms''tabbed 18' .QP A brief description of the Berkeley revisions made to the -ms formatting macros for nroff and troff. .tl 'Writing Papers with nroff using -me''tabbed 19' .QP Another popular macro package for nroff. .tl '-me Reference Manual''tabbed 20' .QP The final word on -me. .tl 'NROFF/TROFF User\'s Manual''tabbed 21' .QP Extremely detailed information about these document formatting programs. .tl 'A TROFF Tutorial''tabbed 22' .QP An introduction to the most basic uses of troff for those who really want to know such things, or want to write their own macros. .tl 'A System for Typesetting Mathematics''tabbed 23' .QP Describes eqn, an easy-to-learn language for high-quality mathematical typesetting. .tl 'Typesetting Mathematics - User\'s Guide (Second Edition)''tabbed 24' .QP More details about how to use eqn. .tl 'Tbl - A Program to Format Tables''tabbed 25' .QP A program for easily typesetting tabular material. .tl 'Refer - A Bibliography System''tabbed 26' .QP An introduction to one set of tools used to maintain bibliographic databases. The major program, refer, is used to automatically retrieve and format the references based on document citations. .tl 'Some Applications of Inverted Indexes on the UNIX System''tabbed 27' .QP Mike Lesk's paper describes the refer programs in a somewhat larger context. .tl 'BIB - A Program for Formatting Bibliographies''tabbed 28' .QP This is an alternative to refer for expanding citations in documents. .tl 'Writing Tools - The STYLE and DICTION Programs''tabbed 29' .QP These are programs which can help you understand and improve your writing style.\s24Introduction\s0 .nr PS 10 .nr VS 12
The documentation for 4.4BSD is in a format similar to the one used for the 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD manuals. It is divided into three sets; each set consists of one or more volumes. The abbreviations for the volume names are listed in square brackets; the abbreviations for the manual sections are listed in parenthesis. I. User's Documents User's Reference Manual [URM] Commands (1) Games (6) Macro packages and language conventions (7) User's Supplementary Documents [USD] Getting Started Basic Utilities Communicating with the World Text Editing Document Preparation Amusements II. Programmer's Documents Programmer's Reference Manual [PRM] System calls (2) Subroutines (3) Special files (4) File formats and conventions (5) Programmer's Supplementary Documents [PSD] Documents of Historic Interest Languages in common use Programming Tools Programming Libraries General Reference III. System Manager's Manual [SMM] Maintenance commands (8) System Installation and Administration
References to individual documents are given as ``volume:document'', thus USD:1 refers to the first document in the ``User's Supplementary Documents''. References to manual pages are given as ``name(section)'' thus sh (1) refers to the shell manual entry in section 1.
The manual pages give descriptions of the features of the 4.4BSD system, as developed at the University of California at Berkeley. They do not attempt to provide perspective or tutorial information about the 4.4BSD operating system, its facilities, or its implementation. Various documents on those topics are contained in the ``\s-1UNIX\s+1 User's Supplementary Documents'' (USD), the ``\s-1UNIX\s+1 Programmer's Supplementary Documents'' (PSD), and ``\s-1UNIX\s+1 System Manager's Manual'' (SMM). In particular, for an overview see ``The \s-1UNIX\s+1 Time-Sharing System'' (PSD:1) by Ritchie and Thompson; for a tutorial see ``\s8\s-1UNIX\s+1\s10 for Beginners'' (USD:1) by Kernighan, and for an guide to the new features of this latest version, see ``Berkeley Software Architecture Manual (4.4 Edition)'' (PSD:5).
Within the area it surveys, this volume attempts to be timely, complete and concise. Where the latter two objectives conflict, the obvious is often left unsaid in favor of brevity. It is intended that each program be described as it is, not as it should be. Inevitably, this means that various sections will soon be out of date.
Commands are programs intended to be invoked directly by the user, in contrast to subroutines, that are intended to be called by the user's programs. User commands are described in URM section 1. Commands generally reside in directory /bin (for bin \|ary programs). Some programs also reside in /\|usr/\|bin, .R to save space in /\|bin. .R These directories are searched automatically by the command interpreters. Additional directories that may be of interest include /\|usr/\|contrib/\|bin, .R which has contributed software /\|usr/\|old/\|bin, .R which has old but sometimes still useful software and /\|usr/\|local/\|bin, .R which contains software local to your site.
Games have been relegated to URM section 6 and /\|usr/\|games, .R to keep them from contaminating the more staid information of URM section 1.
Miscellaneous collection of information necessary for writing in various specialized languages such as character codes, macro packages for typesetting, etc is contained in URM section 7.
System calls are entries into the BSD kernel. The system call interface is identical to a C language procedure call; the equivalent C procedures are described in PRM section 2.
An assortment of subroutines is available; they are described in PRM section 3. The primary libraries in which they are kept are described in intro (3). The functions are described in terms of C.
PRM section 4 discusses the characteristics of each system ``file'' that refers to an I/O device. The names in this section refer to the HP300 device names for the hardware, instead of the names of the special files themselves.
The file formats and conventions (PRM section 5) documents the structure of particular kinds of files; for example, the form of the output of the loader and assembler is given. Excluded are files used by only one command, for example the assembler's intermediate files.
Commands and procedures intended for use primarily by the system administrator are described in SMM section 8. The files described here are almost all kept in the directory /\|etc. The system administration binaries reside in /\|sbin, .R and /\|usr/\|sbin.
Each section consists of independent entries of a page or so each. The name of the entry is in the upper corners of its pages, together with the section number. Entries within each section are alphabetized. The page numbers of each entry start at 1; it is infeasible to number consecutively the pages of a document like this that is republished in many variant forms.
All entries are based on a common format; not all subsections always appear.
The name subsection lists the exact names of the commands and subroutines covered under the entry and gives a short description of their purpose.
The synopsis "" summarizes the use of the program being described. A few conventions are used, particularly in the Commands subsection:
Boldface words are considered literals, and are typed just as they appear.
Square brackets [ ] around an argument show that the argument is optional. When an argument is given as ``name'', it always refers to a file name.
Ellipses ``.\|.\|.'' are used to show that the previous argument-prototype may be repeated.
A final convention is used by the commands themselves. An argument beginning with a minus sign ``-'' usually means that it is an option-specifying argument, even if it appears in a position where a file name could appear. Therefore, it is unwise to have files whose names begin with ``-''.
The files "" subsection gives the names of files that are built into the program.
A see also .R subsection gives pointers to related information.
A diagnostics subsection discusses the diagnostic indications that may be produced. Messages that are intended to be self-explanatory are not listed.
The bugs "" subsection gives known bugs and sometimes deficiencies. Occasionally the suggested fix is also described.