Important and Useful Unix commands

Are you looking for an article which provides a list of important commands used for daily unix activities? This article provides a consolidated list of unix commands.

Introduction

In this article we have listed unix commands for : File and Directories, Compressed Files and Manipulating Data

File and Directory

Command	Details
cat	Displays File Contents
cd	Changes Directory to another directory
chgrp	Changes file group
chmod	Changes permissions
cp	Copies source file into destination
file	Determines file type
find	Finds files
grep	Searches files for regular expressions
head	Displays first few lines of a file
ln	Creates softlink on oldname
ls	Displays information about file type
mkdir	Creates a new directory dirname
more	Displays data in paginated form
mv	Moves (Renames) an oldname to newname
pwd	Prints current working directory
rm	Removes (Deletes) filename
rmdir	Deletes an existing directory provided it is empty
tail	Prints last few lines in a file
touch	Updates access and modification time of a file
vi	To view file content

Compressed Files

Command	Details
compress	Compresses files
gunzip	Helps uncompress gzipped files
gzip	GNU alternative compression method
uncompress	Helps uncompress files
unzip	List, test and extract compressed files in a ZIP archive
zcat	Cat a compressed file
zcmp	Compares compressed files
zdiff	Compares compressed files
zmore	File perusal filter for crt viewing of compressed text
apropos	Locates commands by keyword lookup
info	Displays command information pages online
man	Displays manual pages online
whatis	Searches the whatis database for complete words
yelp	GNOME help viewer

Manipulating Data

Command	Details
awk	Pattern scanning and processing language
cmp	Compares the contents of two files
comm	Compares sorted data
cut	Cuts out selected fields of each line of a file
diff	Differential file comparator
expand	Expands tabs to spaces
join	Joins files on some common field
perl	Data manipulation language
sed	Stream text editor
sort	Sorts file data
split	Splits file into smaller files
tr	Translates characters
uniq	Reports repeated lines in a file
wc	Counts words, lines, and characters
vi	Opens vi text editor
vim	Opens vim text editor
fmt	Simple text formatter
spell	Checks text for spelling error
ispell	Checks text for spelling error
emacs	GNU project Emacs
ex, edit	Line editor

The video below provides a tutorial on Unix topics -