Shell Scripting Cheat Sheet for Unix and Linux - v1.3 - quick reference

Oct 14, 2026

Shell Scripting Cheat Sheet for Unix and Linux provides a compact reference of practical commands and shell syntax. It covers test operators and conditional constructs (e.g., numeric comparisons, if blocks), common control patterns, variable substitution, and function declaration and invocation. It also summarizes file and stream operations, conditional execution with logical operators, and search/filter tools such as grep, egrep, awk, sed, find, less, strace, tar, ssh, and scp, plus useful shell shortcuts like alias management.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages1

AccessFree to download

Common Constructs

Conditional Execution

Files

Generally Useful Commands

Misc Useful Commands and Tools

v1.3 Sept 2012 Shell Scripting Cheat Sheet for Unix and Linux Online: [http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml](http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml)[ ](http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml)Book: [http://steve-parker.org/shellscripting](http://steve-parker.org/shellscripting) File Redirection Test Operators Variable Substitution if [ “$x” -lt “$y” ]; then \# do something fi Common Constructs |
$ while read f read text file
> do line by line
> echo “Line is $f”
> done < file note: “$” prompt
becomes “>” | | | --- | --- | |
$ grep foo myfile find lines in
afoo myfile
foo containing the
foobar text “foo” | | | $ cut-d: -f5 /etc/passwd get 5th field
Steve Parker delimited by colon | | |
$ cmd1 || cmd2 run cmd1; if fails,
run cmd2 | | | $ cmd1 && cmd2 run cmd1; if it
works, run cmd2 | | | case $foo ina) | act upon the value of a | | | | | myvar=`ls` | get output of
ls into variable | | doubleit() {
expr $1 \* 2
}
doubleit 3 \# returns 6 | function
declaration
and syntax
for calling it | Conditional Execution Files | mv /src /dest | move /src into /dest | | --- | --- | | ls a* | list files beginning with “a” | | ls *a | list files ending with “a” | | ls-ltr | list oldest first, newest last | | ls-lSr | list smallest first, biggest last | | ls-a | list all files, including hidden | | find /src-print \ | copy /src into current | | | cpio-pudvm | directory, preserving
links, special devices, etc. | Preset Variables Generally Useful Commands Misc Useful Commands and Tools | egrep “(foo|bar)” file | find “foo” or
“bar” in file | | --- | --- | | awk '{ print $5 }' file | print the 5th word
of each line | | cal 3 1973 | March 1973 | | df-h | show disk mounts | | three=`expr 1 + 2` | simple maths | | echo "scale = 5 ; \ 5121 / 1024" | bc | better maths
(5.00097) | | time cmd | stopwatch on cmd | | touch file | create blank file | | alias ll='ls-l' | alias for ls-l | | unalias ls | unset existing alias | | find . -size 10k-print | files over 10Kb | | --- | --- | | find . -name “*.txt” -print | find text files | | find /foo-type d-ls | list all directories under /foo | | less file | display file page by page | | sed s/foo/bar/g file
sed-i s/foo/bar/g file | replace “foo” with “bar”
in file (-i: update file) | | strace-tfp PID | trace system calls for PID | | tar cvf archive.tar file1 file 2 file3 | create tar archive | | ssh user@host | log in to host as user | | scp file.txt user@host: | copy file.txt to host as user | | scp user@host:/tmp/file.txt /var/tmp | copy /tmp/file.txt from user at host to /var/tmp locally | | cd- | return to previous directory |

FAQs

What test syntax and operators are shown for conditional checks?

It shows using an if statement with test brackets like if [ “$x” -lt “$y” ]; then ... fi to compare values before running commands.

How can logical conditional execution be performed?

The sheet uses operators such as cmd1 || cmd2 to run cmd2 only if cmd1 fails, and cmd1 && cmd2 to run cmd2 only if cmd1 succeeds.

Which tools are listed for searching and text processing?

It includes grep/egrep for matching patterns, awk for printing a specific word field, sed for replacing text in files, and find for locating files by name or type.

Oct 14, 2026

Upload by Lucas Martin