GNU shell utilities - 1. Introduction

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# 1. Introduction

First of all, this manual is incomplete. The `stty` section, in particular, needs substantial reorganization and additional explanatory text before it will be up to the standard of other GNU manuals. Explanatory text in general is lacking; the manual presently assumes you pretty much know what to do, and just need to be reminded of how. Thus, if you are interested, please get involved in improving this manual. The entire GNU community will benefit.

Some of these programs are useful only when writing shell scripts; utilities like these are, in fact, the "language" of shell scripts (to a great extent). Others are occasionally useful interactively.

The GNU shell utilities are mostly compatible with the POSIX.2 standard.

Please report bugs to ``bug-sh-utils@gnu.org'`. Remember to include the version number, machine architecture, input files, and any other information needed to reproduce the bug: your input, what you expected, what you got, and why it is wrong. Diffs are welcome, but please include a description of the problem as well, since this is sometimes difficult to infer. See section `Bugs' in GNU CC.

This manual was originally derived from the Unix man pages in the distribution, which were written by David MacKenzie and updated by Jim Meyering. What you are reading now is the authoritative documentation for these utilities; the man pages are no longer being maintained. Fran@,{c}ois Pinard did the initial conversion to Texinfo format. Karl Berry did the indexing, some reorganization, and editing of the results. Richard Stallman contributed his usual invaluable insights to the overall process.

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