Template talk:Unix commands

Ssh

Isn't ssh used more commonly than rlogin these days? Would probably be worth adding if so. Hairy Dude 12:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

ssh redirects to Secure Shell, and that article describes the protocol, not the Unix command. --tyomitch 04:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Should we add a page for information about the unix command? Like Ssh (Unix)? ~a (user • talk • contribs) 22:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The template needs editing (2006)

I'm about to rearrange the template a little: currently it's just too big and clumsy and unwieldy. In particular, I'm going to remove all the red links: they are fine in an article like List of Unix programs, but not in a nav template. --tyomitch 14:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. The template is 3/4 its former height now. --tyomitch 04:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

How about if it were formatted as in the example below? Then it would be even more compact. — RJH (talk) 15:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The template is non-unixy

This template is the bulkiest and offensive template I've seen. It's design insults the simplistic design philosophy of Unix. Simply linking to List of Unix programs and maintaining Category:Unix software seems more than adequate. --71.254.7.215 06:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Lists and categories are not navigational aids. And if you think its so bad, why dont you try to improve it? --larsinio (poke)^(prod) 15:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the OP, this thing is bloated? I think the only way to improve it is to bury it. Not to mention, this kind of stuff breaks "What links here". --Ashawley (talk) 05:33, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Wall command

In which unix command category should wall be included? Temporarily I have added it to misc !

IrfanAli 09:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

It would, I think, be under the same category as write. I moved it. grendel|khan 12:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

unneeded links

Could we establish some criterion for what goes in here? I think tree, timex, and nkf are all pushing it, giving their limited installed base. Twinxor t 15:43, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Removed. As for criteria, POSIX should probably suffice, with some additions for GNU Coreutils etc. –EdC 23:11, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Commands in 2 sections - more and less

Do the moreand less commands really need to be in both the File and file system management: section and the Text processing: section? I think one section is enough. Also, if both more and less belong here, the pg command should be here too. My opinion is that either all three commands should be included in only one section, or only 1 of the commands should be in one section - for consistency's sake. Once we decide the criteria (see above section) - that would answer this issue of which commands, but the multi-section question remains. --Unixguy 13:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Command added

I use the watch command alot and felt that it deserved a small article. Maybe it should be added to the template. Watch_(Unix) Kidane 23:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice. Added under process management. Btw, Wikipedia talk page etiquette is to add new discussions at the bottom of the page. –EdC 04:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the template, and for the heads-up. :) Kidane 19:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I added "exit" to process management. Without it, it's not clear how to terminate a shell process. — Loadmaster 17:59, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Messed up

exit_(unix) and mount_(unix) redirect elsewhere. That should not happen and should be repaired... Seeing that I also thought of an alternative > throwing all articles in one, 'unix commands', this would be especially useful in regard to the shortness of the articles in question and the fashion to merge them with something completely irelevant. 84.167.233.199 22:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

 fixed the mount (and exit iirc) redirects

Navbox conversion

I've converted this into a standard navbox, which should make it more maintainable and makes better use of space. Comments? Chris Cunningham 12:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Chris (aka User:Thumperward), it looks much better now. I might even say more Unixy if that's a word. Thanks and nice job. --Unixguy 16:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I split the last four categories into separate sections, otherwise they were all bunched up together. Hopefully everyone thinks this looks better than before. — Loadmaster 17:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it does; that's a huge amount of additional whitespace for comparatively little benefit of clarity. Do you mind if I revert this? We need another way of making the divide clearer without introducing so much dead air. Chris Cunningham 13:47, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

In light of a lack of opposition, I'm reverting to the single line for less busy categories. Chris Cunningham 23:55, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's uglier that way, and it makes it harder to see the command groups. A little extra whitespace doesn't hurt, especially if it increases readability. — Loadmaster 17:45, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

It's about a 30% increase in the navbox area. It seems bizarre that we even have a sextion for "printing" with only one link in it when we've got a "miscellaneous" section anyway. If we could recategorise the entries in the smaller sections we could give them a "real" row again without too much dead air. Chris Cunningham 10:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Cron vs Crontab

Why are we linking to crontab which is a redirect to cron? My edit to reflect this reality was reverted; does this make sense to anyone else? --Aquatiki (talk) 12:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

This is about Unix commands, not Unix programs. The command used to interact with cron is crontab. Once upon a time (before I merged them), Wikipedia had two separate articles for cron and crontab. And the link should just be to crontab, rather than piped, in case they're split again at some point in the future. Chris Cunningham (talk) 12:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I see: because we type crontab, and this navbox is listing "things we type." Gotcha. --Aquatiki (talk) 05:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

umask

Shouldn't the umask command appear somewhere ? I suggest putting it under the filesystem section as done -- 212.74.185.158 (talk) 10:17, 18 August 2008 (UTC) jann@practicefirms.ch

Moved umask to misc. as it is in the list of Unix utilities -- 212.74.185.158 (talk) 06:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC) jann@practicefirms.ch

Actually, umask and cd (just added) manipulate the process state and are implemented on Unix as shell built-in commands for that reason. Tedickey (talk) 14:43, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The collection

"Locate" isn't standard on Unix. There are (as noted in the topic) some variants. Tedickey (talk) 13:05, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

There is today 126 commands on this page. What about adding the 185 following others :

addftinfo · afmtodit · arch · ascii · ash · base64 · bash · bashbug · bunzip2 · bzcat · bzcmp · bzdiff · bzegrep · bzfgrep · bzgrep · bzip2 · bzip2recover · bzless · bzmore · chattr · chcon · chflags · conv · crypt · csplit · d2u · date · diff · dig · dir · dircolors · dirname · dnsdomainname · dos2unix · dump · dumper · editrights · egrep · emacs · eqn · ethtool · fgconsole · ftp · getclip · getfacl · gkill · grap2graph · grep · grn · grodvi · groff · groffer · grog · grolbp · grolj4 · grops · grotty · groups · gunzip · gzexe · gzip · halt · host · hostid · hostname · hpftodit · igawk · indxbib · inetutils · info · infokey · install · install-info · ipck · ipcrm · ipcs · iptable · joe · join · launchctl · lessecho · lesskey · link · lkbib · loadkeys · login · lookbib · lpr · lsmod · mail · makeinfo  · man2dvi  · man2html  · manlint  · manpath  · md5sum  · mii-tool · mkfifo  · mkgroup  · mknod  · mkpasswd  · mkshortcut  · mktemp  · mmroff  · modutils  · mountpoint  · msgtool  · nano  · nc  · neqn  · net-tools  · nl  · nohup  · nroff  · od  · oldfind  · patch  · printf  · procps  · ptx  · putclip  · rbash  · readlink  · readshortcut  · realpath  · rebase  · rebaseall  · refer  · regtool  · run  · run-parts  · runcon  · schred  · semstat  · semtool  · seq  · setfacl  · setmetamode  · sh  · sha1sum  · sha224sum  · sha256sum  · sha384sum  · sha512sum  · shadow  · shmtool  · shred  · shuf  · soelim  · ssh  · ssp  · stat  · strace  · stty  · sum  · sync  · sysklogd  · sysvinit  · tar  · tbl  · tcpdump  · tempfile  · texi2dvi  · texi2pdf  · texindex  · tfmtodit  · tracepath  · troff  · tsort  · tty  · u2d  · umount  · uncompress  · unexpand  · unix2dos  · unlink  · updatedb  · users  · util-linux  · vacuum  · vdir  · vdirmktemp  · zcat  · zcmp  · zdiff  · zforcecpio  · zgrepdate  · zlessdd  ? JackPotte (talk) 18:07, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

And reboot, init, halt and shutdown. JackPotte (talk) 14:53, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

A lot of the ones listed above aren't "Unix" commands, but are programs that happen to be available on Unix systems Tedickey (talk) 19:27, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think that we should do a clear sorting : the commands to add here and those for Portal:Free software. JackPotte (talk) 00:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

There it is:

Category	Commands
Unix	ascii	host	ifconfig
GNU Project	arch
Roff	addftinfo	afmtodit
BIND domain name server software suite	dig
Others	ash	base64	bash	bashbug	sh	ascii

JackPotte (talk) 00:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually I've understood that we've carefully respected the XCU commands from 1997 in this template, but we can also qualify of Unix commands those from the newer Unix shells: ash, bash, csh, ksh, sh, tcsh, rc, zsh ? Should we create a commands template for each inside the Unix one ? JackPotte (talk) 20:53, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

dc (computer program)

dc (computer program) is not in the list of standard Unix utilities, per given source. Tedickey (talk) 20:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Neither are many of the utilities on the list, and since dc is both common and of historical interest I'm re-adding it. - DNewhall (talk) 16:40, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

There are a large number of interesting programs - but only a hundred or so match the description of the topic.

But using your logic we need to remove at least apropos, pgrep, pkill, pidof, lsof, uptime, locate, and all the networking utilities because they are not "standard". - DNewhall (talk) 15:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea Tedickey (talk) 20:18, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Let's also move them into the above board in order to keep a full classification here. JackPotte (talk) 13:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

ascii

ascii isn't standard, isn't provided for instance on Solaris (unless one brings the source in, and compiles it there) Tedickey (talk) 20:46, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not included in most Linux distros either (I tried Arch Linux, Ubuntu, Gentoo), so it doesn't look like a popular thing among Unix-likes either. I'm removing. -- intgr [talk] 15:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, I've moved it to the other line, and removed my source from the template page. JackPotte (talk) 13:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Despite the fact that About.com calls it a "Linux / Unix Command", the "ascii" entry is just a man page about the ASCII standard, it does not refer to any actual command. Don't use About.com as a source for this template. -- intgr [talk] 15:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Locate (Unix)

That's not found on "all distributions of Unix", but only on some. For instance a quick check on Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Tru64 and HPUX doesn't find it (man locate, apropos locate). As I recall it, outside of GNU utilities, it's not that well-known (although I recall that it did start off as an imitation of a program from Sun). Tedickey (talk) 09:57, 7 January 2010 (UTC)