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Manual: bash

BASH(1) General Commands Manual BASH(1)

NAME
bash - GNU Bourne-Again SHell

SYNOPSIS
bash [options] [command_string | file]

DESCRIPTION
Bash is a command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard input, from a
string, or from a file. It is a reimplementation and extension of the Bourne shell, the historical
Unix command language interpreter. Bash also incorporates useful features from the Korn and C shells
(ksh and csh).

POSIX is the name for a family of computing standards based on Unix. Bash is intended to be a con‐
formant implementation of the Shell and Utilities portion of the IEEE POSIX specification (IEEE Stan‐
dard 1003.1). Bash POSIX mode (hereafter referred to as posix mode) changes the shell's behavior
where its default operation differs from the standard to strictly conform to the standard. See SEE
ALSO below for a reference to a document that details how posix mode affects bash's behavior. Bash
can be configured to be POSIX-conformant by default.

OPTIONS
All of the single-character shell options documented in the description of the set builtin command,
including -o, can be used as options when the shell is invoked. In addition, bash interprets the
following options when it is invoked:

-c If the -c option is present, then commands are read from the first non-option argument com‐
mand_string. If there are arguments after the command_string, the first argument is as‐
signed to $0 and any remaining arguments are assigned to the positional parameters. The
assignment to $0 sets the name of the shell, which is used in warning and error messages.

-i If the -i option is present, the shell is interactive.

-l Make bash act as if it had been invoked as a login shell (see INVOCATION below).

-r If the -r option is present, the shell becomes restricted (see RESTRICTED SHELL below).

-s If the -s option is present, or if no arguments remain after option processing, the shell
reads commands from the standard input. This option allows the positional parameters to be
set when invoking an interactive shell or when reading input through a pipe.

-v Print shell input lines as they are read.

-x Print commands and their arguments as they are executed.

-D Print a list of all double-quoted strings preceded by $ on the standard output. These are
the strings that are subject to language translation when the current locale is not C or
POSIX. This implies the -n option; no commands will be executed.

[-+]O [shopt_option]
shopt_option is one of the shell options accepted by the shopt builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN
COMMANDS below). If shopt_option is present, -O sets the value of that option; +O unsets
it. If shopt_option is not supplied, bash prints the names and values of the shell options
accepted by shopt on the standard output. If the invocation option is +O, the output is
displayed in a format that may be reused as input.

-- A -- signals the end of options and disables further option processing. Any arguments af‐
ter the -- are treated as a shell script filename (see below) and arguments passed to that
script. An argument of - is equivalent to --.

Bash also interprets a number of multi-character options. These options must appear on the command
line before the single-character options to be recognized.

--debugger
Arrange for the debugger profile to be executed before the shell starts. Turns on extended
debugging mode (see the description of the extdebug option to the shopt builtin below).

--dump-po-strings
Equivalent to -D, but the output is in the GNU gettext “po” (portable object) file format.

--dump-strings
Equivalent to -D.

--help Display a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.

--init-file file
--rcfile file
Execute commands from file instead of the system wide initialization file /etc/bash.bashrc and
the standard personal initialization file ~/.bashrc if the shell is interactive (see INVOCA‐
TION below).

--login
Equivalent to -l.

--noediting
Do not use the GNU readline library to read command lines when the shell is interactive.

--noprofile
Do not read either the system-wide startup file /etc/profile or any of the personal initial‐
ization files ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile. By default, bash reads these
files when it is invoked as a login shell (see INVOCATION below).

--norc Do not read and execute the system wide initialization file /etc/bash.bashrc and the personal
initialization file ~/.bashrc if the shell is interactive. This option is on by default if
the shell is invoked as sh.

--posix
Enable posix mode; change the behavior of bash where the default operation differs from the
POSIX standard to match the standard.

--restricted
The shell becomes restricted (see RESTRICTED SHELL below).

--verbose
Equivalent to -v.

--version
Show version information for this instance of bash on the standard output and exit success‐
fully.

ARGUMENTS
If arguments remain after option processing, and neither the -c nor the -s option has been supplied,
the first argument is treated as the name of a file containing shell commands (a shell script). When
bash is invoked in this fashion, $0 is set to the name of the file, and the positional parameters are
set to the remaining arguments. Bash reads and executes commands from this file, then exits. Bash's
exit status is the exit status of the last command executed in the script. If no commands are exe‐
cuted, the exit status is 0. Bash first attempts to open the file in the current directory, and, if
no file is found, searches the directories in PATH for the script.

INVOCATION
A login shell is one whose first character of argument zero is a -, or one started with the --login
option.

An interactive shell is one started without non-option arguments (unless -s is specified) and without
the -c option, and whose standard input and standard error are both connected to terminals (as deter‐
mined by isatty(3)), or one started with the -i option. Bash sets PS1 and $- includes i if the shell
is interactive, so a shell script or a startup file can test this state.

The following paragraphs describe how bash executes its startup files. If any of the files exist but
cannot be read, bash reports an error. Tildes are expanded in filenames as described below under
Tilde Expansion in the EXPANSION section.

When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive shell with the --login
option, it first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After
reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and
reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option
may be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

When an interactive login shell exits, or a non-interactive login shell executes the exit builtin
command, bash reads and executes commands from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.

When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash reads and executes commands from
etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc, if that file exists. The --norc option inhibits this behavior. The
--rcfile file option causes bash to use file instead of etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc.

When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script, for example, it looks for the variable
BASH_ENV in the environment, expands its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value as
the name of a file to read and execute. Bash behaves as if the following command were executed:

if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then . "$BASH_ENV"; fi

but does not use the value of the PATH variable to search for the filename.

If bash is invoked with the name sh, it tries to mimic the startup behavior of historical versions of
sh as closely as possible, while conforming to the POSIX standard as well. When invoked as an inter‐
active login shell, or a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first attempts to read and
execute commands from /etc/profile and ~/.profile, in that order. The --noprofile option inhibits
this behavior. When invoked as an interactive shell with the name sh, bash looks for the variable
ENV, expands its value if it is defined, and uses the expanded value as the name of a file to read
and execute. Since a shell invoked as sh does not attempt to read and execute commands from any
other startup files, the --rcfile option has no effect. A non-interactive shell invoked with the
name sh does not attempt to read any other startup files.

When invoked as sh, bash enters posix mode after reading the startup files.

When bash is started in posix mode, as with the --posix command line option, it follows the POSIX
standard for startup files. In this mode, interactive shells expand the ENV variable and read and
execute commands from the file whose name is the expanded value. No other startup files are read.

Bash attempts to determine when it is being run with its standard input connected to a network con‐
nection, as when executed by the historical and rarely-seen remote shell daemon, usually rshd, or the
secure shell daemon sshd. If bash determines it is being run non-interactively in this fashion, it
reads and executes commands from etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc, if these files exist and are read‐
able. Bash does not read this file if invoked as sh. The --norc option inhibits this behavior, and
the --rcfile option makes bash use a different file instead of ~/.bashrc, but neither rshd nor sshd
generally invoke the shell with those options or allow them to be specified.

If the shell is started with the effective user (group) id not equal to the real user (group) id, and
the -p option is not supplied, no startup files are read, shell functions are not inherited from the
environment, the SHELLOPTS, BASHOPTS, CDPATH, and GLOBIGNORE variables, if they appear in the envi‐
ronment, are ignored, and the effective user id is set to the real user id. If the -p option is sup‐
plied at invocation, the startup behavior is the same, but the effective user id is not reset.

DEFINITIONS
The following definitions are used throughout the rest of this document.
blank A space or tab.
whitespace
A character belonging to the space character class in the current locale, or for which is‐
space(3) returns true.
word A sequence of characters considered as a single unit by the shell. Also known as a token.
name A word consisting only of alphanumeric characters and underscores, and beginning with an al‐
phabetic character or an underscore. Also referred to as an identifier.
metacharacter
A character that, when unquoted, separates words. One of the following:
| & ; ( ) < > space tab newline
control operator
A token that performs a control function. It is one of the following symbols:
|| & && ; ;; ;& ;;& ( ) | |&

RESERVED WORDS
Reserved words are words that have a special meaning to the shell. The following words are recog‐
nized as reserved when unquoted and either the first word of a command (see SHELL GRAMMAR below), the
third word of a case or select command (only in is valid), or the third word of a for command (only
in and do are valid):

! case coproc do done elif else esac fi for function if in select then until while { } time [[ ]]

SHELL GRAMMAR
This section describes the syntax of the various forms of shell commands.

Simple Commands
A simple command is a sequence of optional variable assignments followed by blank-separated words and
redirections, and terminated by a control operator. The first word specifies the command to be exe‐
cuted, and is passed as argument zero. The remaining words are passed as arguments to the invoked
command.

The return value of a simple command is its exit status, or 128+n if the command is terminated by
signal n.

Pipelines
A pipeline is a sequence of one or more commands separated by one of the control operators | or |&.
The format for a pipeline is:

[time [-p]] [ ! ] command1 [ [|⎪|&] command2 ... ]

The standard output of command1 is connected via a pipe to the standard input of command2. This con‐
nection is performed before any redirections specified by the command1(see REDIRECTION below). If |&
is the pipeline operator, command1's standard error, in addition to its standard output, is connected
to command2's standard input through the pipe; it is shorthand for 2>&1 |. This implicit redirection
of the standard error to the standard output is performed after any redirections specified by com‐
mand1.

The return status of a pipeline is the exit status of the last command, unless the pipefail option is
enabled. If pipefail is enabled, the pipeline's return status is the value of the last (rightmost)
command to exit with a non-zero status, or zero if all commands exit successfully. If the reserved
word ! precedes a pipeline, the exit status of that pipeline is the logical negation of the exit
status as described above. If a pipeline is executed synchronously, the shell waits for all commands
in the pipeline to terminate before returning a value.

If the time reserved word precedes a pipeline, the shell reports the elapsed as well as user and sys‐
tem time consumed by its execution when the pipeline terminates. The -p option changes the output
format to that specified by POSIX. When the shell is in posix mode, it does not recognize time as a
reserved word if the next token begins with a “-”. The value of the TIMEFORMAT variable is a format
string that specifies how the timing information should be displayed; see the description of TIMEFOR‐
MAT below under Shell Variables.

When the shell is in posix mode, time may appear by itself as the only word in a simple command. In
this case, the shell displays the total user and system time consumed by the shell and its children.
The TIMEFORMAT variable specifies the format of the time information.

Each command in a multi-command pipeline, where pipes are created, is executed in a subshell, which
is a separate process. See COMMAND EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT for a description of subshells and a sub‐
shell environment. If the lastpipe option is enabled using the shopt builtin (see the description of
shopt below), and job control is not active, the last element of a pipeline may be run by the shell
process.

Lists
A list is a sequence of one or more pipelines separated by one of the operators ;, &, &&, or ||, and
optionally terminated by one of ;, &, or .

Of these list operators, && and || have equal precedence, followed by ; and &, which have equal
precedence.

A sequence of one or more newlines may appear in a list instead of a semicolon to delimit commands.

If a command is terminated by the control operator &, the shell executes the command in the back‐
ground in a subshell. The shell does not wait for the command to finish, and the return status is 0.
These are referred to as asynchronous commands. Commands separated by a ; are executed sequentially;
the shell waits for each command to terminate in turn. The return status is the exit status of the
last command executed.

AND and OR lists are sequences of one or more pipelines separated by the && and || control operators,
respectively. AND and OR lists are executed with left associativity. An AND list has the form

command1 && command2

command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns an exit status of zero (success).

An OR list has the form

command1 || command2

command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns a non-zero exit status. The return status of
AND and OR lists is the exit status of the last command executed in the list.

Compound Commands
A compound command is one of the following. In most cases a list in a command's description may be
separated from the rest of the command by one or more newlines, and may be followed by a newline in
place of a semicolon.

(list) list is executed in a subshell (see COMMAND EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT below for a description of a
subshell environment). Variable assignments and builtin commands that affect the shell's en‐
vironment do not remain in effect after the command completes. The return status is the exit
status of list.

{ list; }
list is executed in the current shell environment. list must be terminated with a newline or
semicolon. This is known as a group command. The return status is the exit status of list.

Note that unlike the metacharacters ( and ), { and } are reserved words and must occur where a
reserved word is permitted to be recognized. Since they do not cause a word break, they must
be separated from list by whitespace or another shell metacharacter.

((expression))
The arithmetic expression is evaluated according to the rules described below under ARITHMETIC
EVALUATION. If the value of the expression is non-zero, the return status is 0; otherwise the
return status is 1. The expression undergoes the same expansions as if it were within double
quotes, but unescaped double quote characters in expression are not treated specially and are
removed. Since this can potentially result in empty strings, this command treats those as ex‐
pressions that evaluate to 0.

[[ expression ]]
Evaluate the conditional expression expression and return a status of zero (true) or non-zero
(false). Expressions are composed of the primaries described below under CONDITIONAL EXPRES‐
SIONS. The words between the [[ and ]] do not undergo word splitting and pathname expansion.
The shell performs tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic expansion,
command substitution, process substitution, and quote removal on those words. Conditional op‐
erators such as -f must be unquoted to be recognized as primaries.

When used with [[, the < and > operators sort lexicographically using the current locale.

See the description of the test builtin command (section SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) for the han‐
dling of parameters (i.e. missing parameters).

When the == and != operators are used, the string to the right of the operator is considered a
pattern and matched according to the rules described below under Pattern Matching, as if the
extglob shell option were enabled. The = operator is equivalent to ==. If the nocasematch
shell option is enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of alphabetic char‐
acters. The return value is 0 if the string matches (==) or does not match (!=) the pattern,
and 1 otherwise. If any part of the pattern is quoted, the quoted portion is matched as a
string: every character in the quoted portion matches itself, instead of having any special
pattern matching meaning.

An additional binary operator, =~, is available, with the same precedence as == and !=. When
it is used, the string to the right of the operator is considered a POSIX extended regular ex‐
pression and matched accordingly (using the POSIX regcomp and regexec interfaces usually de‐
scribed in regex(3)). The return value is 0 if the string matches the pattern, and 1 other‐
wise. If the regular expression is syntactically incorrect, the conditional expression's re‐
turn value is 2. If the nocasematch shell option is enabled, the match is performed without
regard to the case of alphabetic characters.

If any part of the pattern is quoted, the quoted portion is matched literally, as above. If
the pattern is stored in a shell variable, quoting the variable expansion forces the entire
pattern to be matched literally. Treat bracket expressions in regular expressions carefully,
since normal quoting and pattern characters lose their meanings between brackets.

The match succeeds if the pattern matches any part of the string. Anchor the pattern using
the ^ and $ regular expression operators to force it to match the entire string.

The array variable BASH_REMATCH records which parts of the string matched the pattern. The
element of BASH_REMATCH with index 0 contains the portion of the string matching the entire
regular expression. Substrings matched by parenthesized subexpressions within the regular ex‐
pression are saved in the remaining BASH_REMATCH indices. The element of BASH_REMATCH with
index n is the portion of the string matching the nth parenthesized subexpression. Bash sets
BASH_REMATCH in the global scope; declaring it as a local variable will lead to unexpected re‐
sults.

Expressions may be combined using the following operators, listed in decreasing order of
precedence:

( expression )
Returns the value of expression. This may be used to override the normal precedence of
operators.
! expression
True if expression is false.
expression1 && expression2
True if both expression1 and expression2 are true.
expression1 || expression2
True if either expression1 or expression2 is true.

The && and || operators do not evaluate expression2 if the value of expression1 is sufficient
to determine the return value of the entire conditional expression.

for name [ [ in word ... ] ; ] do list ; done
First, expand The list of words following in, generating a list of items. Then, the variable
name is set to each element of this list in turn, and list is executed each time. If the in
word is omitted, the for command executes list once for each positional parameter that is set
(see PARAMETERS below). The return status is the exit status of the last command that exe‐
cutes. If the expansion of the items following in results in an empty list, no commands are
executed, and the return status is 0.

for (( expr1 ; expr2 ; expr3 )) [;] do list ; done
First, evaluate the arithmetic expression expr1 according to the rules described below under
ARITHMETIC EVALUATION. Then, repeatedly evaluate the arithmetic expression expr2 until it
evaluates to zero. Each time expr2 evaluates to a non-zero value, execute list and evaluate
the arithmetic expression expr3. If any expression is omitted, it behaves as if it evaluates
to 1. The return value is the exit status of the last command in list that is executed, or
non-zero if any of the expressions is invalid.

Use the break and continue builtins (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) to control loop execu‐
tion.

select name [ in word ] ; do list ; done
First, expand the list of words following in, generating a list of items, and print the set of
expanded words the standard error, each preceded by a number. If the in word is omitted,
print the positional parameters (see PARAMETERS below). select then displays the PS3 prompt
and reads a line from the standard input. If the line consists of a number corresponding to
one of the displayed words, then select sets the value of name to that word. If the line is
empty, select displays the words and prompt again. If EOF is read, select completes and re‐
turns 1. Any other value sets name to null. The line read is saved in the variable REPLY.
The list is executed after each selection until a break command is executed. The exit status
of select is the exit status of the last command executed in list, or zero if no commands were
executed.

case word in [ [(] pattern [ | pattern ] ... ) list ;; ] ... esac
A case command first expands word, and tries to match it against each pattern in turn, pro‐
ceeding from first to last, using the matching rules described under Pattern Matching below.
A pattern list is a set of one or more patterns separated by , and the ) operator terminates
the pattern list. The word is expanded using tilde expansion, parameter and variable expan‐
sion, arithmetic expansion, command substitution, process substitution and quote removal.
Each pattern examined is expanded using tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion,
arithmetic expansion, command substitution, process substitution, and quote removal. If the
nocasematch shell option is enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case of al‐
phabetic characters. A clause is a pattern list and an associated list.

When a match is found, case executes the corresponding list. If the ;; operator terminates
the case clause, the case command completes after the first match. Using ;& in place of ;;
causes execution to continue with the list associated with the next pattern list. Using ;;&
in place of ;; causes the shell to test the next pattern list in the statement, if any, and
execute any associated list if the match succeeds, continuing the case statement execution as
if the pattern list had not matched. The exit status is zero if no pattern matches.

Otherwise, it is the exit status of the last command executed in the last list executed.

if list; then list; [ elif list; then list; ] ... [ else list; ] fi
The if list is executed. If its exit status is zero, the then list is executed. Otherwise,
each elif list is executed in turn, and if its exit status is zero, the corresponding then
list is executed and the command completes. Otherwise, the else list is executed, if present.
The exit status is the exit status of the last command executed, or zero if no condition
tested true.

while list-1; do list-2; done
until list-1; do list-2; done
The while command continuously executes the list list-2 as long as the last command in the
list list-1 returns an exit status of zero. The until command is identical to the while com‐
mand, except that the test is negated: list-2 is executed as long as the last command in
list-1 returns a non-zero exit status. The exit status of the while and until commands is the
exit status of the last command executed in list-2, or zero if none was executed.

Coprocesses
A coprocess is a shell command preceded by the coproc reserved word. A coprocess is executed asyn‐
chronously in a subshell, as if the command had been terminated with the & control operator, with a
two-way pipe established between the executing shell and the coprocess.

The syntax for a coprocess is:

coproc [NAME] command [redirections]

This creates a coprocess named NAME. command may be either a simple command or a compound command
(see above). NAME is a shell variable name. If NAME is not supplied, the default name is COPROC.

The recommended form to use for a coprocess is

coproc NAME { command [redirections]; }

This form is preferred because simple commands result in the coprocess always being named COPROC, and
it is simpler to use and more complete than the other compound commands.

If command is a compound command, NAME is optional. The word following coproc determines whether that
word is interpreted as a variable name: it is interpreted as NAME if it is not a reserved word that
introduces a compound command. If command is a simple command, NAME is not allowed; this is to avoid
confusion between NAME and the first word of the simple command.

When the coprocess is executed, the shell creates an array variable (see Arrays below) named NAME in
the context of the executing shell. The standard output of command is connected via a pipe to a file
descriptor in the executing shell, and that file descriptor is assigned to NAME[0]. The standard in‐
put of command is connected via a pipe to a file descriptor in the executing shell, and that file de‐
scriptor is assigned to NAME[1]. This pipe is established before any redirections specified by the
command (see REDIRECTION below). The file descriptors can be utilized as arguments to shell commands
and redirections using standard word expansions. Other than those created to execute command and
process substitutions, the file descriptors are not available in subshells.

The process ID of the shell spawned to execute the coprocess is available as the value of the vari‐
able NAME_PID. The wait builtin may be used to wait for the coprocess to terminate.

Since the coprocess is created as an asynchronous command, the coproc command always returns success.
The return status of a coprocess is the exit status of command.

Shell Function Definitions
A shell function is an object that is called like a simple command and executes a compound command
with a new set of positional parameters. Shell functions are declared as follows:

fname () compound-command [redirection]
function fname [()] compound-command [redirection]
This defines a function named fname. The reserved word function is optional. If the function
reserved word is supplied, the parentheses are optional. The body of the function is the com‐
pound command compound-command (see Compound Commands above). That command is usually a list
of commands between { and }, but may be any command listed under Compound Commands above. If
the function reserved word is used, but the parentheses are not supplied, the braces are rec‐
ommended. compound-command is executed whenever fname is specified as the name of a simple
command. When in posix mode, fname must be a valid shell name and may not be the name of one
of the POSIX special builtins. In default mode, a function name can be any unquoted shell
word that does not contain $.

Any redirections (see REDIRECTION below) specified when a function is defined are performed when the
function is executed.

The exit status of a function definition is zero unless a syntax error occurs or a readonly function
with the same name already exists. When executed, the exit status of a function is the exit status
of the last command executed in the body. (See FUNCTIONS below.)

COMMENTS
In a non-interactive shell, or an interactive shell in which the interactive_comments option to the
shopt builtin is enabled (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below), a word beginning with # introduces a
comment. A word begins at the beginning of a line, after unquoted whitespace, or after an operator.
The comment causes that word and all remaining characters on that line to be ignored. An interactive
shell without the interactive_comments option enabled does not allow comments. The interactive_com‐
ments option is enabled by default in interactive shells.

QUOTING
Quoting is used to remove the special meaning of certain characters or words to the shell. Quoting
can be used to disable special treatment for special characters, to prevent reserved words from being
recognized as such, and to prevent parameter expansion.

Each of the metacharacters listed above under DEFINITIONS has special meaning to the shell and must
be quoted if it is to represent itself.

When the command history expansion facilities are being used (see HISTORY EXPANSION below), the his‐
tory expansion character, usually !, must be quoted to prevent history expansion.

There are four quoting mechanisms: the escape character, single quotes, double quotes, and dollar-
single quotes.

A non-quoted backslash (\) is the escape character. It preserves the literal value of the next char‐
acter that follows, removing any special meaning it has, with the exception of . If a
\ pair appears, and the backslash is not itself quoted, the \ is treated as a line
continuation (that is, it is removed from the input stream and effectively ignored).

Enclosing characters in single quotes preserves the literal value of each character within the
quotes. A single quote may not occur between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash.

Enclosing characters in double quotes preserves the literal value of all characters within the
quotes, with the exception of $, `, \, and, when history expansion is enabled, !. When the shell is
in posix mode, the ! has no special meaning within double quotes, even when history expansion is en‐
abled. The characters $ and ` retain their special meaning within double quotes. The backslash re‐
tains its special meaning only when followed by one of the following characters: $, `, ", \, or . Backslashes preceding characters without a special meaning are left unmodified.

A double quote may be quoted within double quotes by preceding it with a backslash. If enabled, his‐
tory expansion will be performed unless an ! appearing in double quotes is escaped using a back‐
slash. The backslash preceding the ! is not removed.

The special parameters * and @ have special meaning when in double quotes (see PARAMETERS below).

Character sequences of the form $'string' are treated as a special variant of single quotes. The se‐
quence expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters in string replaced as specified by the
ANSI C standard. Backslash escape sequences, if present, are decoded as follows:
\a alert (bell)
\b backspace
\e
\E an escape character
\f form feed
\n new line
\r carriage return
\t horizontal tab
\v vertical tab
\\ backslash
\' single quote
\" double quote
\? question mark
\nnn The eight-bit character whose value is the octal value nnn (one to three octal digits).
\xHH The eight-bit character whose value is the hexadecimal value HH (one or two hex dig‐
its).
\uHHHH The Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the hexadecimal value HHHH (one to
four hex digits).
\UHHHHHHHH
The Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the hexadecimal value HHHHHHHH
(one to eight hex digits).
\cx A control-x character.

The expanded result is single-quoted, as if the dollar sign had not been present.

Translating Strings
A double-quoted string preceded by a dollar sign ($"string") causes the string to be translated ac‐
cording to the current locale. The gettext infrastructure performs the lookup and translation, using
the LC_MESSAGES, TEXTDOMAINDIR, and TEXTDOMAIN shell variables. If the current locale is C or POSIX,
if there are no translations available, or if the string is not translated, the dollar sign is ig‐
nored, and the string is treated as double-quoted as described above. This is a form of double quot‐
ing, so the string remains double-quoted by default, whether or not it is translated and replaced.
If the noexpand_translation option is enabled using the shopt builtin, translated strings are single-
quoted instead of double-quoted. See the description of shopt below under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS.

PARAMETERS
A parameter is an entity that stores values. It can be a name, a number, or one of the special char‐
acters listed below under Special Parameters. A variable is a parameter denoted by a name. A vari‐
able has a value and zero or more attributes. Attributes are assigned using the declare builtin com‐
mand (see declare below in SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS). The export and readonly builtins assign specific
attributes.

A parameter is set if it has been assigned a value. The null string is a valid value. Once a vari‐
able is set, it may be unset only by using the unset builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS be‐
low).

A variable is assigned to using a statement of the form

name=[value]

If value is not given, the variable is assigned the null string. All values undergo tilde expansion,
parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal (see
EXPANSION below). If the variable has its integer attribute set, then value is evaluated as an
arithmetic expression even if the $((...)) expansion is not used (see Arithmetic Expansion below).
Word splitting and pathname expansion are not performed. Assignment statements may also appear as
arguments to the alias, declare, typeset, export, readonly, and local builtin commands (declaration
commands). When in posix mode, these builtins may appear in a command after one or more instances of
the command builtin and retain these assignment statement properties.

In the context where an assignment statement is assigning a value to a shell variable or array index,
the “+=” operator appends to or adds to the variable's previous value. This includes arguments to
declaration commands such as declare that accept assignment statements. When “+=” is applied to a
variable for which the integer attribute has been set, the variable's current value and value are
each evaluated as arithmetic expressions, and the sum of the results is assigned as the variable's
value. The current value is usually an integer constant, but may be an expression. When “+=” is ap‐
plied to an array variable using compound assignment (see Arrays below), the variable's value is not
unset (as it is when using “=”), and new values are appended to the array beginning at one greater
than the array's maximum index (for indexed arrays) or added as additional key-value pairs in an as‐
sociative array. When applied to a string-valued variable, value is expanded and appended to the
variable's value.

A variable can be assigned the nameref attribute using the -n option to the declare or local builtin
commands (see the descriptions of declare and local below) to create a nameref, or a reference to an‐
other variable. This allows variables to be manipulated indirectly. Whenever the nameref variable
is referenced, assigned to, unset, or has its attributes modified (other than using or changing the
nameref attribute itself), the operation is actually performed on the variable specified by the
nameref variable's value. A nameref is commonly used within shell functions to refer to a variable
whose name is passed as an argument to the function. For instance, if a variable name is passed to a
shell function as its first argument, running

declare -n ref=$1

inside the function creates a local nameref variable ref whose value is the variable name passed as
the first argument. References and assignments to ref, and changes to its attributes, are treated as
references, assignments, and attribute modifications to the variable whose name was passed as $1. If
the control variable in a for loop has the nameref attribute, the list of words can be a list of
shell variables, and a name reference is established for each word in the list, in turn, when the
loop is executed. Array variables cannot be given the nameref attribute. However, nameref variables
can reference array variables and subscripted array variables. Namerefs can be unset using the -n
option to the unset builtin. Otherwise, if unset is executed with the name of a nameref variable as
an argument, the variable referenced by the nameref variable is unset.

When the shell starts, it reads its environment and creates a shell variable from each environment
variable that has a valid name, as described below (see ENVIRONMENT).

Positional Parameters
A positional parameter is a parameter denoted by one or more digits, other than the single digit 0.
Positional parameters are assigned from the shell's arguments when it is invoked, and may be reas‐
signed using the set builtin command. Positional parameters may not be assigned to with assignment
statements. The positional parameters are temporarily replaced when a shell function is executed
(see FUNCTIONS below).

When a positional parameter consisting of more than a single digit is expanded, it must be enclosed
in braces (see EXPANSION below). Without braces, a digit following $ can only refer to one of the
first nine positional parameters ($1-$9) or the special parameter $0 (see the next section).

Special Parameters
The shell treats several parameters specially. These parameters may only be referenced; assignment
to them is not allowed. Special parameters are denoted by one of the following characters.

* ($*) Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one. When the expansion is not
within double quotes, each positional parameter expands to a separate word. In contexts where
word expansions are performed, those words are subject to further word splitting and pathname
expansion. When the expansion occurs within double quotes, it expands to a single word with
the value of each parameter separated by the first character of the IFS variable. That is,
"$*" is equivalent to "$1c$2c...", where c is the first character of the value of the IFS
variable. If IFS is unset, the parameters are separated by spaces. If IFS is null, the para‐
meters are joined without intervening separators.
@ ($@) Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one. In contexts where word split‐
ting is performed, this expands each positional parameter to a separate word; if not within
double quotes, these words are subject to word splitting. In contexts where word splitting is
not performed, such as the value portion of an assignment statement, this expands to a single
word with each positional parameter separated by a space. When the expansion occurs within
double quotes, and word splitting is performed, each parameter expands to a separate word.
That is, "$@" is equivalent to "$1" "$2" ... If the double-quoted expansion occurs within a
word, the expansion of the first parameter is joined with the expansion of the beginning part
of the original word, and the expansion of the last parameter is joined with the expansion of
the last part of the original word. When there are no positional parameters, "$@" and $@ ex‐
pand to nothing (i.e., they are removed).
# ($#) Expands to the number of positional parameters in decimal.
? ($?) Expands to the exit status of the most recently executed command.
- ($-) Expands to the current option flags as specified upon invocation, by the set builtin com‐
mand, or those set by the shell itself (such as the -i option).
$ ($$) Expands to the process ID of the shell. In a subshell, it expands to the process ID of
the parent shell, not the subshell.
! ($!)Expands to the process ID of the job most recently placed into the background, whether ex‐
ecuted as an asynchronous command or using the bg builtin (see JOB CONTROL below).
0 ($0) Expands to the name of the shell or shell script. This is set at shell initialization.
If bash is invoked with a file of commands, $0 is set to the name of that file. If bash is
started with the -c option, then $0 is set to the first argument after the string to be exe‐
cuted, if one is present. Otherwise, it is set to the filename used to invoke bash, as given
by argument zero.

Shell Variables
The shell sets following variables:

_ ($_, an underscore) This has a number of meanings depending on context. At shell startup, _
is set to the pathname used to invoke the shell or shell script being executed as passed in
the environment or argument list. Subsequently, it expands to the last argument to the previ‐
ous simple command executed in the foreground, after expansion. It is also set to the full
pathname used to invoke each command executed and placed in the environment exported to that
command. When checking mail, $_ expands to the name of the mail file currently being checked.
BASH Expands to the full filename used to invoke this instance of bash.
BASHOPTS
A colon-separated list of enabled shell options. Each word in the list is a valid argument
for the -s option to the shopt builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). The op‐
tions appearing in BASHOPTS are those reported as on by shopt. If this variable is in the en‐
vironment when bash starts up, the shell enables each option in the list before reading any
startup files. If this variable is exported, child shells will enable each option in the
list. This variable is read-only.
BASHPID
Expands to the process ID of the current bash process. This differs from $$ under certain
circumstances, such as subshells that do not require bash to be re-initialized. Assignments
to BASHPID have no effect. If BASHPID is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it
is subsequently reset.
BASH_ALIASES
An associative array variable whose members correspond to the internal list of aliases as
maintained by the alias builtin. Elements added to this array appear in the alias list; how‐
ever, unsetting array elements currently does not remove aliases from the alias list. If
BASH_ALIASES is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
BASH_ARGC
An array variable whose values are the number of parameters in each frame of the current bash
execution call stack. The number of parameters to the current subroutine (shell function or
script executed with . or source) is at the top of the stack. When a subroutine is executed,
the number of parameters passed is pushed onto BASH_ARGC. The shell sets BASH_ARGC only when
in extended debugging mode (see the description of the extdebug option to the shopt builtin
below). Setting extdebug after the shell has started to execute a script, or referencing this
variable when extdebug is not set, may result in inconsistent values. Assignments to
BASH_ARGC have no effect, and it may not be unset.
BASH_ARGV
An array variable containing all of the parameters in the current bash execution call stack.
The final parameter of the last subroutine call is at the top of the stack; the first parame‐
ter of the initial call is at the bottom. When a subroutine is executed, the shell pushes the
supplied parameters onto BASH_ARGV. The shell sets BASH_ARGV only when in extended debugging
mode (see the description of the extdebug option to the shopt builtin below). Setting extde‐
bug after the shell has started to execute a script, or referencing this variable when extde‐
bug is not set, may result in inconsistent values. Assignments to BASH_ARGV have no effect,
and it may not be unset.
BASH_ARGV0
When referenced, this variable expands to the name of the shell or shell script (identical to
$0; see the description of special parameter 0 above). Assigning a value to BASH_ARGV0 sets
$0 to the same value. If BASH_ARGV0 is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is
subsequently reset.
BASH_CMDS
An associative array variable whose members correspond to the internal hash table of commands
as maintained by the hash builtin. Adding elements to this array makes them appear in the
hash table; however, unsetting array elements currently does not remove command names from the
hash table. If BASH_CMDS is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subse‐
quently reset.
BASH_COMMAND
Expands to the command currently being executed or about to be executed, unless the shell is
executing a command as the result of a trap, in which case it is the command executing at the
time of the trap. If BASH_COMMAND is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is
subsequently reset.
BASH_EXECUTION_STRING
The command argument to the -c invocation option.
BASH_LINENO
An array variable whose members are the line numbers in source files where each corresponding
member of FUNCNAME was invoked. ${BASH_LINENO[$i]} is the line number in the source file
(${BASH_SOURCE[$i+1]}) where ${FUNCNAME[$i]} was called (or ${BASH_LINENO[$i-1]} if referenced
within another shell function). Use LINENO to obtain the current line number. Assignments to
BASH_LINENO have no effect, and it may not be unset.
BASH_LOADABLES_PATH
A colon-separated list of directories in which the enable command looks for dynamically load‐
able builtins.
BASH_MONOSECONDS
Each time this variable is referenced, it expands to the value returned by the system's monot‐
onic clock, if one is available. If there is no monotonic clock, this is equivalent to
EPOCHSECONDS. If BASH_MONOSECONDS is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is
subsequently reset.
BASH_REMATCH
An array variable whose members are assigned by the =~ binary operator to the [[ conditional
command. The element with index 0 is the portion of the string matching the entire regular
expression. The element with index n is the portion of the string matching the nth parenthe‐
sized subexpression.
BASH_SOURCE
An array variable whose members are the source filenames where the corresponding shell func‐
tion names in the FUNCNAME array variable are defined. The shell function ${FUNCNAME[$i]} is
defined in the file ${BASH_SOURCE[$i]} and called from ${BASH_SOURCE[$i+1]}. Assignments to
BASH_SOURCE have no effect, and it may not be unset.
BASH_SUBSHELL
Incremented by one within each subshell or subshell environment when the shell begins execut‐
ing in that environment. The initial value is 0. If BASH_SUBSHELL is unset, it loses its
special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
BASH_TRAPSIG
Set to the signal number corresponding to the trap action being executed during its execution.
See the description of trap under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below for information about signal
numbers and trap execution.
BASH_VERSINFO
A readonly array variable whose members hold version information for this instance of bash.
The values assigned to the array members are as follows:
BASH_VERSINFO[0] The major version number (the release).
BASH_VERSINFO[1] The minor version number (the version).
BASH_VERSINFO[2] The patch level.
BASH_VERSINFO[3] The build version.
BASH_VERSINFO[4] The release status (e.g., beta).
BASH_VERSINFO[5] The value of MACHTYPE.
BASH_VERSION
Expands to a string describing the version of this instance of bash (e.g., 5.2.37(3)-release).
COMP_CWORD
An index into ${COMP_WORDS} of the word containing the current cursor position. This variable
is available only in shell functions invoked by the programmable completion facilities (see
Programmable Completion below).
COMP_KEY
The key (or final key of a key sequence) used to invoke the current completion function. This
variable is available only in shell functions and external commands invoked by the programma‐
ble completion facilities (see Programmable Completion below).
COMP_LINE
The current command line. This variable is available only in shell functions and external
commands invoked by the programmable completion facilities (see Programmable Completion be‐
low).
COMP_POINT
The index of the current cursor position relative to the beginning of the current command. If
the current cursor position is at the end of the current command, the value of this variable
is equal to ${#COMP_LINE}. This variable is available only in shell functions and external
commands invoked by the programmable completion facilities (see Programmable Completion be‐
low).
COMP_TYPE
Set to an integer value corresponding to the type of attempted completion that caused a com‐
pletion function to be called: TAB, for normal completion, ?, for listing completions after
successive tabs, !, for listing alternatives on partial word completion, @, to list comple‐
tions if the word is not unmodified, or %, for menu completion. This variable is available
only in shell functions and external commands invoked by the programmable completion facili‐
ties (see Programmable Completion below).
COMP_WORDBREAKS
The set of characters that the readline library treats as word separators when performing word
completion. If COMP_WORDBREAKS is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is sub‐
sequently reset.
COMP_WORDS
An array variable (see Arrays below) consisting of the individual words in the current command
line. The line is split into words as readline would split it, using COMP_WORDBREAKS as de‐
scribed above. This variable is available only in shell functions invoked by the programmable
completion facilities (see Programmable Completion below).
COPROC An array variable (see Arrays below) created to hold the file descriptors for output from and
input to an unnamed coprocess (see Coprocesses above).
DIRSTACK
An array variable (see Arrays below) containing the current contents of the directory stack.
Directories appear in the stack in the order they are displayed by the dirs builtin. Assign‐
ing to members of this array variable may be used to modify directories already in the stack,
but the pushd and popd builtins must be used to add and remove directories. Assigning to this
variable does not change the current directory. If DIRSTACK is unset, it loses its special
properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
EPOCHREALTIME
Each time this parameter is referenced, it expands to the number of seconds since the Unix
Epoch (see time(3)) as a floating-point value with micro-second granularity. Assignments to
EPOCHREALTIME are ignored. If EPOCHREALTIME is unset, it loses its special properties, even
if it is subsequently reset.
EPOCHSECONDS
Each time this parameter is referenced, it expands to the number of seconds since the Unix
Epoch (see time(3)). Assignments to EPOCHSECONDS are ignored. If EPOCHSECONDS is unset, it
loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
EUID Expands to the effective user ID of the current user, initialized at shell startup. This
variable is readonly.
FUNCNAME
An array variable containing the names of all shell functions currently in the execution call
stack. The element with index 0 is the name of any currently-executing shell function. The
bottom-most element (the one with the highest index) is “main”. This variable exists only
when a shell function is executing. Assignments to FUNCNAME have no effect. If FUNCNAME is
unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.

This variable can be used with BASH_LINENO and BASH_SOURCE. Each element of FUNCNAME has cor‐
responding elements in BASH_LINENO and BASH_SOURCE to describe the call stack. For instance,
${FUNCNAME[$i]} was called from the file ${BASH_SOURCE[$i+1]} at line number
${BASH_LINENO[$i]}. The caller builtin displays the current call stack using this informa‐
tion.
GROUPS An array variable containing the list of groups of which the current user is a member. As‐
signments to GROUPS have no effect. If GROUPS is unset, it loses its special properties, even
if it is subsequently reset.
HISTCMD
The history number, or index in the history list, of the current command. Assignments to
HISTCMD have no effect. If HISTCMD is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is
subsequently reset.
HOSTNAME
Automatically set to the name of the current host.
HOSTTYPE
Automatically set to a string that uniquely describes the type of machine on which bash is ex‐
ecuting. The default is system-dependent.
LINENO Each time this parameter is referenced, the shell substitutes a decimal number representing
the current sequential line number (starting with 1) within a script or function. When not in
a script or function, the value substituted is not guaranteed to be meaningful. If LINENO is
unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
MACHTYPE
Automatically set to a string that fully describes the system type on which bash is executing,
in the standard GNU cpu-company-system format. The default is system-dependent.
MAPFILE
An array variable (see Arrays below) created to hold the text read by the mapfile builtin when
no variable name is supplied.
OLDPWD The previous working directory as set by the cd command.
OPTARG The value of the last option argument processed by the getopts builtin command (see SHELL
BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
OPTIND The index of the next argument to be processed by the getopts builtin command (see SHELL
BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
OSTYPE Automatically set to a string that describes the operating system on which bash is executing.
The default is system-dependent.
PIPESTATUS
An array variable (see Arrays below) containing a list of exit status values from the commands
in the most-recently-executed foreground pipeline, which may consist of only a simple command
(see SHELL GRAMMAR above). Bash sets PIPESTATUS after executing multi-element pipelines,
timed and negated pipelines, simple commands, subshells created with the ( operator, the [[
and (( compound commands, and after error conditions that result in the shell aborting command
execution.
PPID The process ID of the shell's parent. This variable is readonly.
PWD The current working directory as set by the cd command.
RANDOM Each time this parameter is referenced, it expands to a random integer between 0 and 32767.
Assigning a value to RANDOM initializes (seeds) the sequence of random numbers. Seeding the
random number generator with the same constant value produces the same sequence of values. If
RANDOM is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
READLINE_ARGUMENT
Any numeric argument given to a readline command that was defined using “bind -x” (see SHELL
BUILTIN COMMANDS below) when it was invoked.
READLINE_LINE
The contents of the readline line buffer, for use with “bind -x” (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS
below).
READLINE_MARK
The position of the mark (saved insertion point) in the readline line buffer, for use with
“bind -x” (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). The characters between the insertion point and
the mark are often called the region.
READLINE_POINT
The position of the insertion point in the readline line buffer, for use with “bind -x” (see
SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
REPLY Set to the line of input read by the read builtin command when no arguments are supplied.
SECONDS
Each time this parameter is referenced, it expands to the number of seconds since shell invo‐
cation. If a value is assigned to SECONDS, the value returned upon subsequent references is
the number of seconds since the assignment plus the value assigned. The number of seconds at
shell invocation and the current time are always determined by querying the system clock at
one-second resolution. If SECONDS is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is
subsequently reset.
SHELLOPTS
A colon-separated list of enabled shell options. Each word in the list is a valid argument
for the -o option to the set builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). The options
appearing in SHELLOPTS are those reported as on by set -o. If this variable is in the envi‐
ronment when bash starts up, the shell enables each option in the list before reading any
startup files. If this variable is exported, child shells will enable each option in the
list. This variable is read-only.
SHLVL Incremented by one each time an instance of bash is started.
SRANDOM
Each time it is referenced, this variable expands to a 32-bit pseudo-random number. The ran‐
dom number generator is not linear on systems that support /dev/urandom or arc4random(3), so
each returned number has no relationship to the numbers preceding it. The random number gen‐
erator cannot be seeded, so assignments to this variable have no effect. If SRANDOM is unset,
it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
UID Expands to the user ID of the current user, initialized at shell startup. This variable is
readonly.

The shell uses the following variables. In some cases, bash assigns a default value to a variable;
these cases are noted below.

BASH_COMPAT
The value is used to set the shell's compatibility level. See SHELL COMPATIBILITY MODE below
for a description of the various compatibility levels and their effects. The value may be a
decimal number (e.g., 4.2) or an integer (e.g., 42) corresponding to the desired compatibility
level. If BASH_COMPAT is unset or set to the empty string, the compatibility level is set to
the default for the current version. If BASH_COMPAT is set to a value that is not one of the
valid compatibility levels, the shell prints an error message and sets the compatibility level
to the default for the current version. A subset of the valid values correspond to the com‐
patibility levels described below under SHELL COMPATIBILITY MODE. For example, 4.2 and 42 are
valid values that correspond to the compat42 shopt option and set the compatibility level to
42. The current version is also a valid value.
BASH_ENV
If this parameter is set when bash is executing a shell script, its expanded value is inter‐
preted as a filename containing commands to initialize the shell before it reads and executes
commands from the script. The value of BASH_ENV is subjected to parameter expansion, command
substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted as a filename. PATH is not
used to search for the resultant filename.
BASH_XTRACEFD
If set to an integer corresponding to a valid file descriptor, bash writes the trace output
generated when “set -x” is enabled to that file descriptor, instead of the standard error.
The file descriptor is closed when BASH_XTRACEFD is unset or assigned a new value. Unsetting
BASH_XTRACEFD or assigning it the empty string causes the trace output to be sent to the stan‐
dard error. Note that setting BASH_XTRACEFD to 2 (the standard error file descriptor) and
then unsetting it will result in the standard error being closed.
CDPATH The search path for the cd command. This is a colon-separated list of directories where the
shell looks for directories specified as arguments to the cd command. A sample value is
“.:~:/usr”.
CHILD_MAX
Set the number of exited child status values for the shell to remember. Bash will not allow
this value to be decreased below a POSIX-mandated minimum, and there is a maximum value (cur‐
rently 8192) that this may not exceed. The minimum value is system-dependent.
COLUMNS
Used by the select compound command to determine the terminal width when printing selection
lists. Automatically set if the checkwinsize option is enabled or in an interactive shell
upon receipt of a SIGWINCH.
COMPREPLY
An array variable from which bash reads the possible completions generated by a shell function
invoked by the programmable completion facility (see Programmable Completion below). Each ar‐
ray element contains one possible completion.
EMACS If bash finds this variable in the environment when the shell starts with value “t”, it as‐
sumes that the shell is running in an Emacs shell buffer and disables line editing.
ENV Expanded and executed similarly to BASH_ENV (see INVOCATION above) when an interactive shell
is invoked in posix mode.
EXECIGNORE
A colon-separated list of shell patterns (see Pattern Matching) defining the set of filenames
to be ignored by command search using PATH. Files whose full pathnames match one of these
patterns are not considered executable files for the purposes of completion and command execu‐
tion via PATH lookup. This does not affect the behavior of the [, test, and [[ commands.
Full pathnames in the command hash table are not subject to EXECIGNORE. Use this variable to
ignore shared library files that have the executable bit set, but are not executable files.
The pattern matching honors the setting of the extglob shell option.
FCEDIT The default editor for the fc builtin command.
FIGNORE
A colon-separated list of suffixes to ignore when performing filename completion (see READLINE
below). A filename whose suffix matches one of the entries in FIGNORE is excluded from the
list of matched filenames. A sample value is “.o:~” (Quoting is needed when assigning a value
to this variable, which contains tildes).
FUNCNEST
If set to a numeric value greater than 0, defines a maximum function nesting level. Function
invocations that exceed this nesting level cause the current command to abort.
GLOBIGNORE
A colon-separated list of patterns defining the set of file names to be ignored by pathname
expansion. If a file name matched by a pathname expansion pattern also matches one of the
patterns in GLOBIGNORE, it is removed from the list of matches. The pattern matching honors
the setting of the extglob shell option.
GLOBSORT
Controls how the results of pathname expansion are sorted. The value of this variable speci‐
fies the sort criteria and sort order for the results of pathname expansion. If this variable
is unset or set to the null string, pathname expansion uses the historical behavior of sorting
by name, in ascending lexicographic order as determined by the LC_COLLATE shell variable.

If set, a valid value begins with an optional +, which is ignored, or -, which reverses the
sort order from ascending to descending, followed by a sort specifier. The valid sort speci‐
fiers are name, numeric, size, mtime, atime, ctime, and blocks, which sort the files on name,
names in numeric rather than lexicographic order, file size, modification time, access time,
inode change time, and number of blocks, respectively. If any of the non-name keys compare as
equal (e.g., if two files are the same size), sorting uses the name as a secondary sort key.

For example, a value of -mtime sorts the results in descending order by modification time
(newest first).

The numeric specifier treats names consisting solely of digits as numbers and sorts them using
their numeric value (so “2” sorts before “10”, for example). When using numeric, names con‐
taining non-digits sort after all the all-digit names and are sorted by name using the tradi‐
tional behavior.

A sort specifier of nosort disables sorting completely; bash returns the results in the order
they are read from the file system, ignoring any leading -.

If the sort specifier is missing, it defaults to name, so a value of + is equivalent to the
null string, and a value of - sorts by name in descending order. Any invalid value restores
the historical sorting behavior.
HISTCONTROL
A colon-separated list of values controlling how commands are saved on the history list. If
the list of values includes ignorespace, lines which begin with a space character are not
saved in the history list. A value of ignoredups causes lines matching the previous history
entry not to be saved. A value of ignoreboth is shorthand for ignorespace and ignoredups. A
value of erasedups causes all previous lines matching the current line to be removed from the
history list before that line is saved. Any value not in the above list is ignored. If HIST‐
CONTROL is unset, or does not include a valid value, bash saves all lines read by the shell
parser on the history list, subject to the value of HISTIGNORE. If the first line of a multi-
line compound command was saved, the second and subsequent lines are not tested, and are added
to the history regardless of the value of HISTCONTROL. If the first line was not saved, the
second and subsequent lines of the command are not saved either.
HISTFILE
The name of the file in which command history is saved (see HISTORY below). Bash assigns a
default value of ~/.bash_history. If HISTFILE is unset or null, the shell does not save the
command history when it exits.
HISTFILESIZE
The maximum number of lines contained in the history file. When this variable is assigned a
value, the history file is truncated, if necessary, to contain no more than the number of his‐
tory entries that total no more than that number of lines by removing the oldest entries. If
the history list contains multi-line entries, the history file may contain more lines than
this maximum to avoid leaving partial history entries. The history file is also truncated to
this size after writing it when a shell exits or by the history builtin. If the value is 0,
the history file is truncated to zero size. Non-numeric values and numeric values less than
zero inhibit truncation. The shell sets the default value to the value of HISTSIZE after
reading any startup files.
HISTIGNORE
A colon-separated list of patterns used to decide which command lines should be saved on the
history list. If a command line matches one of the patterns in the value of HISTIGNORE, it is
not saved on the history list. Each pattern is anchored at the beginning of the line and must
match the complete line (bash does not implicitly append a “*”). Each pattern is tested
against the line after the checks specified by HISTCONTROL are applied. In addition to the
normal shell pattern matching characters, “&” matches the previous history line. A backslash
escapes the “&”; the backslash is removed before attempting a match. If the first line of a
multi-line compound command was saved, the second and subsequent lines are not tested, and are
added to the history regardless of the value of HISTIGNORE. If the first line was not saved,
the second and subsequent lines of the command are not saved either. The pattern matching
honors the setting of the extglob shell option.
HISTIGNORE subsumes some of the function of HISTCONTROL. A pattern of “&” is identical to “‐
ignoredups”, and a pattern of “[ ]*” is identical to “ignorespace”. Combining these two pat‐
terns, separating them with a colon, provides the functionality of “ignoreboth”.
HISTSIZE
The number of commands to remember in the command history (see HISTORY below). If the value
is 0, commands are not saved in the history list. Numeric values less than zero result in
every command being saved on the history list (there is no limit). The shell sets the default
value to 500 after reading any startup files.
HISTTIMEFORMAT
If this variable is set and not null, its value is used as a format string for strftime(3) to
print the time stamp associated with each history entry displayed by the history builtin. If
this variable is set, the shell writes time stamps to the history file so they may be pre‐
served across shell sessions. This uses the history comment character to distinguish time‐
stamps from other history lines.
HOME The home directory of the current user; the default argument for the cd builtin command. The
value of this variable is also used when performing tilde expansion.
HOSTFILE
Contains the name of a file in the same format as /etc/hosts that should be read when the
shell needs to complete a hostname. The list of possible hostname completions may be changed
while the shell is running; the next time hostname completion is attempted after the value is
changed, bash adds the contents of the new file to the existing list. If HOSTFILE is set, but
has no value, or does not name a readable file, bash attempts to read /etc/hosts to obtain the
list of possible hostname completions. When HOSTFILE is unset, bash clears the hostname list.
IFS The Internal Field Separator that is used for word splitting after expansion and to split
lines into words with the read builtin command. Word splitting is described below under EX‐
PANSION. The default value is “”.
IGNOREEOF
Controls the action of an interactive shell on receipt of an EOF character as the sole input.
If set, the value is the number of consecutive EOF characters which must be typed as the first
characters on an input line before bash exits. If the variable is set but does not have a nu‐
meric value, or the value is null, the default value is 10. If it is unset, EOF signifies the
end of input to the shell.
INPUTRC
The filename for the readline startup file, overriding the default of ~/.inputrc (see READLINE
below).
INSIDE_EMACS
If this variable appears in the environment when the shell starts, bash assumes that it is
running inside an Emacs shell buffer and may disable line editing, depending on the value of
TERM.
LANG Used to determine the locale category for any category not specifically selected with a vari‐
able starting with LC_.
LC_ALL This variable overrides the value of LANG and any other LC_ variable specifying a locale cate‐
gory.
LC_COLLATE
This variable determines the collation order used when sorting the results of pathname expan‐
sion, and determines the behavior of range expressions, equivalence classes, and collating se‐
quences within pathname expansion and pattern matching.
LC_CTYPE
This variable determines the interpretation of characters and the behavior of character
classes within pathname expansion and pattern matching.
LC_MESSAGES
This variable determines the locale used to translate double-quoted strings preceded by a $.
LC_NUMERIC
This variable determines the locale category used for number formatting.
LC_TIME
This variable determines the locale category used for data and time formatting.
LINES Used by the select compound command to determine the column length for printing selection
lists. Automatically set if the checkwinsize option is enabled or in an interactive shell
upon receipt of a SIGWINCH.
MAIL If the value is set to a file or directory name and the MAILPATH variable is not set, bash in‐
forms the user of the arrival of mail in the specified file or Maildir-format directory.
MAILCHECK
Specifies how often (in seconds) bash checks for mail. The default is 60 seconds. When it is
time to check for mail, the shell does so before displaying the primary prompt. If this vari‐
able is unset, or set to a value that is not a number greater than or equal to zero, the shell
disables mail checking.
MAILPATH
A colon-separated list of filenames to be checked for mail. The message to be printed when
mail arrives in a particular file may be specified by separating the filename from the message
with a “?”. When used in the text of the message, $_ expands to the name of the current mail‐
file. For example:
MAILPATH='/var/mail/bfox?"You have mail":~/shell-mail?"$_ has mail!"'
Bash can be configured to supply a default value for this variable (there is no value by de‐
fault), but the location of the user mail files that it uses is system dependent (e.g.,
/var/mail/$USER).
OPTERR If set to the value 1, bash displays error messages generated by the getopts builtin command
(see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). OPTERR is initialized to 1 each time the shell is invoked
or a shell script is executed.
PATH The search path for commands. It is a colon-separated list of directories in which the shell
looks for commands (see COMMAND EXECUTION below). A zero-length (null) directory name in the
value of PATH indicates the current directory. A null directory name may appear as two adja‐
cent colons, or as an initial or trailing colon. The default path is system-dependent, and is
set by the administrator who installs bash. A common value is
/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin
POSIXLY_CORRECT
If this variable is in the environment when bash starts, the shell enters posix mode before
reading the startup files, as if the --posix invocation option had been supplied. If it is
set while the shell is running, bash enables posix mode, as if the command “set -o posix” had
been executed. When the shell enters posix mode, it sets this variable if it was not already
set.
PROMPT_COMMAND
If this variable is set, and is an array, the value of each set element is executed as a com‐
mand prior to issuing each primary prompt. If this is set but not an array variable, its
value is used as a command to execute instead.
PROMPT_DIRTRIM
If set to a number greater than zero, the value is used as the number of trailing directory
components to retain when expanding the \w and \W prompt string escapes (see PROMPTING below).
Characters removed are replaced with an ellipsis.
PS0 The value of this parameter is expanded (see PROMPTING below) and displayed by interactive
shells after reading a command and before the command is executed.
PS1 The value of this parameter is expanded (see PROMPTING below) and used as the primary prompt
string. The default value is “\s-\v\$ ”.
PS2 The value of this parameter is expanded as with PS1 and used as the secondary prompt string.
The default is “> ”.
PS3 The value of this parameter is used as the prompt for the select command (see SHELL GRAMMAR
above).
PS4 The value of this parameter is expanded as with PS1 and the value is printed before each com‐
mand bash displays during an execution trace. The first character of the expanded value of
PS4 is replicated multiple times, as necessary, to indicate multiple levels of indirection.
The default is “+ ”.
SHELL This variable expands to the full pathname to the shell. If it is not set when the shell
starts, bash assigns to it the full pathname of the current user's login shell.
TIMEFORMAT
The value of this parameter is used as a format string specifying how the timing information
for pipelines prefixed with the time reserved word should be displayed. The % character in‐
troduces an escape sequence that is expanded to a time value or other information. The escape
sequences and their meanings are as follows; the brackets denote optional portions.
%% A literal %.
%[p][l]R The elapsed time in seconds.
%[p][l]U The number of CPU seconds spent in user mode.
%[p][l]S The number of CPU seconds spent in system mode.
%P The CPU percentage, computed as (%U + %S) / %R.

The optional p is a digit specifying the precision, the number of fractional digits after a
decimal point. A value of 0 causes no decimal point or fraction to be output. time prints at
most six digits after the decimal point; values of p greater than 6 are changed to 6. If p is
not specified, time prints three digits after the decimal point.

The optional l specifies a longer format, including minutes, of the form MMmSS.FFs. The value
of p determines whether or not the fraction is included.

If this variable is not set, bash acts as if it had the value
$'\nreal\t%3lR\nuser\t%3lU\nsys\t%3lS'. If the value is null, bash does not display any tim‐
ing information. A trailing newline is added when the format string is displayed.
TMOUT If set to a value greater than zero, the read builtin uses the value as its default timeout.
The select command terminates if input does not arrive after TMOUT seconds when input is com‐
ing from a terminal. In an interactive shell, the value is interpreted as the number of sec‐
onds to wait for a line of input after issuing the primary prompt. Bash terminates after
waiting for that number of seconds if a complete line of input does not arrive.
TMPDIR If set, bash uses its value as the name of a directory in which bash creates temporary files
for the shell's use.
auto_resume
This variable controls how the shell interacts with the user and job control. If this vari‐
able is set, simple commands consisting of only a single word, without redirections, are
treated as candidates for resumption of an existing stopped job. There is no ambiguity al‐
lowed; if there is more than one job beginning with or containing the word, this selects the
most recently accessed job. The name of a stopped job, in this context, is the command line
used to start it, as displayed by jobs. If set to the value exact, the word must match the
name of a stopped job exactly; if set to substring, the word needs to match a substring of the
name of a stopped job. The substring value provides functionality analogous to the %? job
identifier (see JOB CONTROL below). If set to any other value (e.g., prefix), the word must
be a prefix of a stopped job's name; this provides functionality analogous to the %string job
identifier.
histchars
The two or three characters which control history expansion, quick substitution, and tokeniza‐
tion (see HISTORY EXPANSION below). The first character is the history expansion character,
the character which begins a history expansion, normally “!”. The second character is the
quick substitution character, normally “^”. When it appears as the first character on the
line, history substitution repeats the previous command, replacing one string with another.
The optional third character is the history comment character, normally “#”, which indicates
that the remainder of the line is a comment when it appears as the first character of a word.
The history comment character disables history substitution for the remaining words on the
line. It does not necessarily cause the shell parser to treat the rest of the line as a com‐
ment.

Arrays
Bash provides one-dimensional indexed and associative array variables. Any variable may be used as
an indexed array; the declare builtin explicitly declares an array. There is no maximum limit on the
size of an array, nor any requirement that members be indexed or assigned contiguously. Indexed ar‐
rays are referenced using arithmetic expressions that must expand to an integer (see ARITHMETIC EVAL‐
UATION below) and are zero-based; associative arrays are referenced using arbitrary strings. Unless
otherwise noted, indexed array indices must be non-negative integers.

The shell performs parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, command substitution, and
quote removal on indexed array subscripts. Since this can potentially result in empty strings, sub‐
script indexing treats those as expressions that evaluate to 0.

The shell performs tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, command
substitution, and quote removal on associative array subscripts. Empty strings cannot be used as as‐
sociative array keys.

Bash automatically creates an indexed array if any variable is assigned to using the syntax
name[subscript]=value .
The subscript is treated as an arithmetic expression that must evaluate to a number greater than or
equal to zero. To explicitly declare an indexed array, use
declare -a name
(see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
declare -a name[subscript]
is also accepted; the subscript is ignored.

Associative arrays are created using
declare -A name
.

Attributes may be specified for an array variable using the declare and readonly builtins. Each at‐
tribute applies to all members of an array.

Arrays are assigned using compound assignments of the form name=(value1 ... valuen), where each value
may be of the form [subscript]=string. Indexed array assignments do not require anything but string.
Each value in the list is expanded using the shell expansions described below under EXPANSION, but
values that are valid variable assignments including the brackets and subscript do not undergo brace
expansion and word splitting, as with individual variable assignments.

When assigning to indexed arrays, if the optional brackets and subscript are supplied, that index is
assigned to; otherwise the index of the element assigned is the last index assigned to by the state‐
ment plus one. Indexing starts at zero.

When assigning to an associative array, the words in a compound assignment may be either assignment
statements, for which the subscript is required, or a list of words that is interpreted as a sequence
of alternating keys and values: name=( key1 value1 key2 value2 ...). These are treated identically
to name=( [key1]=value1 [key2]=value2 ...). The first word in the list determines how the remaining
words are interpreted; all assignments in a list must be of the same type. When using key/value
pairs, the keys may not be missing or empty; a final missing value is treated like the empty string.

This syntax is also accepted by the declare builtin. Individual array elements may be assigned to
using the name[subscript]=value syntax introduced above.

When assigning to an indexed array, if name is subscripted by a negative number, that number is in‐
terpreted as relative to one greater than the maximum index of name, so negative indices count back
from the end of the array, and an index of -1 references the last element.

The “+=” operator appends to an array variable when assigning using the compound assignment syntax;
see PARAMETERS above.

An array element is referenced using ${name[subscript]}. The braces are required to avoid conflicts
with pathname expansion. If subscript is @ or *, the word expands to all members of name, unless
noted in the description of a builtin or word expansion. These subscripts differ only when the word
appears within double quotes. If the word is double-quoted, ${name[*]} expands to a single word with
the value of each array member separated by the first character of the IFS special variable, and
${name[@]} expands each element of name to a separate word. When there are no array members,
${name[@]} expands to nothing. If the double-quoted expansion occurs within a word, the expansion of
the first parameter is joined with the beginning part of the expansion of the original word, and the
expansion of the last parameter is joined with the last part of the expansion of the original word.
This is analogous to the expansion of the special parameters * and @ (see Special Parameters above).

${#name[subscript]} expands to the length of ${name[subscript]}. If subscript is * or @, the expan‐
sion is the number of elements in the array.

If the subscript used to reference an element of an indexed array evaluates to a number less than
zero, it is interpreted as relative to one greater than the maximum index of the array, so negative
indices count back from the end of the array, and an index of -1 references the last element.

Referencing an array variable without a subscript is equivalent to referencing the array with a sub‐
script of 0. Any reference to a variable using a valid subscript is valid; bash creates an array if
necessary.

An array variable is considered set if a subscript has been assigned a value. The null string is a
valid value.

It is possible to obtain the keys (indices) of an array as well as the values. ${!name[@]} and
${!name[*]} expand to the indices assigned in array variable name. The treatment when in double
quotes is similar to the expansion of the special parameters @ and * within double quotes.

The unset builtin is used to destroy arrays. unset name[subscript] unsets the array element at index
subscript, for both indexed and associative arrays. Negative subscripts to indexed arrays are inter‐
preted as described above. Unsetting the last element of an array variable does not unset the vari‐
able. unset name, where name is an array, removes the entire array. unset name[subscript] behaves
differently depending on whether name is an indexed or associative array when subscript is * or @.
If name is an associative array, this unsets the element with subscript * or @. If name is an in‐
dexed array, unset removes all of the elements but does not remove the array itself.

When using a variable name with a subscript as an argument to a command, such as with unset, without
using the word expansion syntax described above, (e.g., unset a[4]), the argument is subject to path‐
name expansion. Quote the argument if pathname expansion is not desired (e.g., unset 'a[4]').

The declare, local, and readonly builtins each accept a -a option to specify an indexed array and a
-A option to specify an associative array. If both options are supplied, -A takes precedence. The
read builtin accepts a -a option to assign a list of words read from the standard input to an array.
The set and declare builtins display array values in a way that allows them to be reused as assign‐
ments. Other builtins accept array name arguments as well (e.g., mapfile); see the descriptions of
individual builtins below for details. The shell provides a number of builtin array variables.

EXPANSION
Expansion is performed on the command line after it has been split into words. The shell performs
these expansions: brace expansion, tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, command substi‐
tution, arithmetic expansion, word splitting, pathname expansion, and quote removal.

The order of expansions is: brace expansion; tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion,
arithmetic expansion, and command substitution (done in a left-to-right fashion); word splitting;
pathname expansion; and quote removal.

On systems that can support it, there is an additional expansion available: process substitution.
This is performed at the same time as tilde, parameter, variable, and arithmetic expansion and com‐
mand substitution.

Quote removal is always performed last. It removes quote characters present in the original word,
not ones resulting from one of the other expansions, unless they have been quoted themselves.

Only brace expansion, word splitting, and pathname expansion can increase the number of words of the
expansion; other expansions expand a single word to a single word. The only exceptions to this are
the expansions of "$@" and "${name[@]}", and, in most cases, $* and ${name[*]} as explained above
(see PARAMETERS).

Brace Expansion
Brace expansion is a mechanism to generate arbitrary strings sharing a common prefix and suffix, ei‐
ther of which can be empty. This mechanism is similar to pathname expansion, but the filenames gen‐
erated need not exist. Patterns to be brace expanded are formed from an optional preamble, followed
by either a series of comma-separated strings or a sequence expression between a pair of braces, fol‐
lowed by an optional postscript. The preamble is prefixed to each string contained within the
braces, and the postscript is then appended to each resulting string, expanding left to right.

Brace expansions may be nested. The results of each expanded string are not sorted; brace expansion
preserves left to right order. For example, a{d,c,b}e expands into “ade ace abe”.

A sequence expression takes the form x..y[..incr], where x and y are either integers or single let‐
ters, and incr, an optional increment, is an integer. When integers are supplied, the expression ex‐
pands to each number between x and y, inclusive. If either x or y begins with a zero, each generated
term will contain the same number of digits, zero-padding where necessary. When letters are sup‐
plied, the expression expands to each character lexicographically between x and y, inclusive, using
the C locale. Note that both x and y must be of the same type (integer or letter). When the incre‐
ment is supplied, it is used as the difference between each term. The default increment is 1 or -1
as appropriate.

Brace expansion is performed before any other expansions, and any characters special to other expan‐
sions are preserved in the result. It is strictly textual. Bash does not apply any syntactic inter‐
pretation to the context of the expansion or the text between the braces.

A correctly-formed brace expansion must contain unquoted opening and closing braces, and at least one
unquoted comma or a valid sequence expression. Any incorrectly formed brace expansion is left un‐
changed.

A “{” or Q , may be quoted with a backslash to prevent its being considered part of a brace expres‐
sion. To avoid conflicts with parameter expansion, the string “${” is not considered eligible for
brace expansion, and inhibits brace expansion until the closing “}”.

This construct is typically used as shorthand when the common prefix of the strings to be generated
is longer than in the above example:

mkdir /usr/local/src/bash/{old,new,dist,bugs}
or
chown root /usr/{ucb/{ex,edit},lib/{ex?.?*,how_ex}}

Brace expansion introduces a slight incompatibility with historical versions of sh. sh does not
treat opening or closing braces specially when they appear as part of a word, and preserves them in
the output. Bash removes braces from words as a consequence of brace expansion. For example, a word
entered to sh as “file{1,2}” appears identically in the output. Bash outputs that word as “file1
file2” after brace expansion. Start bash with the +B option or disable brace expansion with the +B
option to the set command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) for strict sh compatibility.

Tilde Expansion
If a word begins with an unquoted tilde character (“~”), all of the characters preceding the first
unquoted slash (or all characters, if there is no unquoted slash) are considered a tilde-prefix. If
none of the characters in the tilde-prefix are quoted, the characters in the tilde-prefix following
the tilde are treated as a possible login name. If this login name is the null string, the tilde is
replaced with the value of the shell parameter HOME. If HOME is unset, the tilde expands to the home
directory of the user executing the shell instead. Otherwise, the tilde-prefix is replaced with the
home directory associated with the specified login name.

If the tilde-prefix is a “~+”, the value of the shell variable PWD replaces the tilde-prefix. If the
tilde-prefix is a “~-”, the shell substitutes the value of the shell variable OLDPWD, if it is set.
If the characters following the tilde in the tilde-prefix consist of a number N, optionally prefixed
by a “+” or a “-”, the tilde-prefix is replaced with the corresponding element from the directory
stack, as it would be displayed by the dirs builtin invoked with the characters following the tilde
in the tilde-prefix as an argument. If the characters following the tilde in the tilde-prefix con‐
sist of a number without a leading “+” or “-”, tilde expansion assumes “+”.

The results of tilde expansion are treated as if they were quoted, so the replacement is not subject
to word splitting and pathname expansion.

If the login name is invalid, or the tilde expansion fails, the tilde-prefix is unchanged.

Bash checks each variable assignment for unquoted tilde-prefixes immediately following a : or the
first =, and performs tilde expansion in these cases. Consequently, one may use filenames with
tildes in assignments to PATH, MAILPATH, and CDPATH, and the shell assigns the expanded value.

Bash also performs tilde expansion on words satisfying the conditions of variable assignments (as de‐
scribed above under PARAMETERS) when they appear as arguments to simple commands. Bash does not do
this, except for the declaration commands listed above, when in posix mode.

Parameter Expansion
The “$” character introduces parameter expansion, command substitution, or arithmetic expansion. The
parameter name or symbol to be expanded may be enclosed in braces, which are optional but serve to
protect the variable to be expanded from characters immediately following it which could be inter‐
preted as part of the name.

When braces are used, the matching ending brace is the first “}” not escaped by a backslash or within
a quoted string, and not within an embedded arithmetic expansion, command substitution, or parameter
expansion.

The basic form of parameter expansion is

${parameter}

which substitutes the value of parameter. The braces are required when parameter is a positional pa‐
rameter with more than one digit, or when parameter is followed by a character which is not to be in‐
terpreted as part of its name. The parameter is a shell parameter as described above PARAMETERS) or
an array reference (Arrays).

If the first character of parameter is an exclamation point (!), and parameter is not a nameref, it
introduces a level of indirection. Bash uses the value formed by expanding the rest of parameter as
the new parameter; this new parameter is then expanded and that value is used in the rest of the ex‐
pansion, rather than the expansion of the original parameter. This is known as indirect expansion.
The value is subject to tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic
expansion. If parameter is a nameref, this expands to the name of the parameter referenced by para‐
meter instead of performing the complete indirect expansion, for compatibility. The exceptions to
this are the expansions of ${!prefix*} and ${!name[@]} described below. The exclamation point must
immediately follow the left brace in order to introduce indirection.

In each of the cases below, word is subject to tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substi‐
tution, and arithmetic expansion.

When not performing substring expansion, using the forms documented below (e.g., :-), bash tests for
a parameter that is unset or null. Omitting the colon tests only for a parameter that is unset.

${parameter:-word}
Use Default Values. If parameter is unset or null, the expansion of word is substituted.
Otherwise, the value of parameter is substituted.

${parameter:=word}
Assign Default Values. If parameter is unset or null, the expansion of word is assigned to
parameter, and the expansion is the final value of parameter. Positional parameters and spe‐
cial parameters may not be assigned in this way.

${parameter:?word}
Display Error if Null or Unset. If parameter is null or unset, the shell writes the expansion
of word (or a message to that effect if word is not present) to the standard error and, if it
is not interactive, exits with a non-zero status. An interactive shell does not exit, but
does not execute the command associated with the expansion. Otherwise, the value of parameter
is substituted.

${parameter:+word}
Use Alternate Value. If parameter is null or unset, nothing is substituted, otherwise the ex‐
pansion of word is substituted. The value of parameter is not used.

${parameter:offset}
${parameter:offset:length}
Substring Expansion. Expands to up to length characters of the value of parameter starting at
the character specified by offset. If parameter is @ or *, an indexed array subscripted by @
or *, or an associative array name, the results differ as described below. If :length is
omitted (the first form above), this expands to the substring of the value of parameter start‐
ing at the character specified by offset and extending to the end of the value. If offset is
omitted, it is treated as 0. If length is omitted, but the colon after offset is present, it
is treated as 0. length and offset are arithmetic expressions (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION be‐
low).

If offset evaluates to a number less than zero, the value is used as an offset in characters
from the end of the value of parameter. If length evaluates to a number less than zero, it is
interpreted as an offset in characters from the end of the value of parameter rather than a
number of characters, and the expansion is the characters between offset and that result.
Note that a negative offset must be separated from the colon by at least one space to avoid
being confused with the :- expansion.

If parameter is @ or *, the result is length positional parameters beginning at offset. A
negative offset is taken relative to one greater than the greatest positional parameter, so an
offset of -1 evaluates to the last positional parameter (or 0 if there are no positional para‐
meters). It is an expansion error if length evaluates to a number less than zero.

If parameter is an indexed array name subscripted by @ or *, the result is the length members
of the array beginning with ${parameter[offset]}. A negative offset is taken relative to one
greater than the maximum index of the specified array. It is an expansion error if length
evaluates to a number less than zero.

Substring expansion applied to an associative array produces undefined results.

Substring indexing is zero-based unless the positional parameters are used, in which case the
indexing starts at 1 by default. If offset is 0, and the positional parameters are used, $0
is prefixed to the list.

${!prefix*}
${!prefix@}
Names matching prefix. Expands to the names of variables whose names begin with prefix, sepa‐
rated by the first character of the IFS special variable. When @ is used and the expansion
appears within double quotes, each variable name expands to a separate word.

${!name[@]}
${!name[*]}
List of array keys. If name is an array variable, expands to the list of array indices (keys)
assigned in name. If name is not an array, expands to 0 if name is set and null otherwise.
When @ is used and the expansion appears within double quotes, each key expands to a separate
word.

${#parameter}
Parameter length. Substitutes the length in characters of the expanded value of parameter.
If parameter is * or @, the value substituted is the number of positional parameters. If pa‐
rameter is an array name subscripted by * or @, the value substituted is the number of ele‐
ments in the array. If parameter is an indexed array name subscripted by a negative number,
that number is interpreted as relative to one greater than the maximum index of parameter, so
negative indices count back from the end of the array, and an index of -1 references the last
element.

${parameter#word}
${parameter##word}
Remove matching prefix pattern. The word is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname
expansion, and matched against the expanded value of parameter using the rules described under
Pattern Matching below. If the pattern matches the beginning of the value of parameter, then
the result of the expansion is the expanded value of parameter with the shortest matching pat‐
tern (the “#” case) or the longest matching pattern (the “##” case) deleted. If parameter is
@ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each positional parameter in turn, and the
expansion is the resultant list. If parameter is an array variable subscripted with @ or *,
the pattern removal operation is applied to each member of the array in turn, and the expan‐
sion is the resultant list.

${parameter%word}
${parameter%%word}
Remove matching suffix pattern. The word is expanded to produce a pattern just as in pathname
expansion, and matched against the expanded value of parameter using the rules described under
Pattern Matching below. If the pattern matches a trailing portion of the expanded value of
parameter, then the result of the expansion is the expanded value of parameter with the short‐
est matching pattern (the “%” case) or the longest matching pattern (the “%%” case) deleted.
If parameter is @ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each positional parameter
in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list. If parameter is an array variable sub‐
scripted with @ or *, the pattern removal operation is applied to each member of the array in
turn, and the expansion is the resultant list.

${parameter/pattern/string}
${parameter//pattern/string}
${parameter/#pattern/string}
${parameter/%pattern/string}
Pattern substitution. The pattern is expanded to produce a pattern and matched against the
expanded value of parameter as described under Pattern Matching below. The longest match of
pattern in the expanded value is replaced with string. string undergoes tilde expansion, pa‐
rameter and variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, command and process substitution, and
quote removal.

In the first form above, only the first match is replaced. If there are two slashes separat‐
ing parameter and pattern (the second form above), all matches of pattern are replaced with
string. If pattern is preceded by # (the third form above), it must match at the beginning of
the expanded value of parameter. If pattern is preceded by % (the fourth form above), it must
match at the end of the expanded value of parameter.

If the expansion of string is null, matches of pattern are deleted and the / following pattern
may be omitted.

If the patsub_replacement shell option is enabled using shopt, any unquoted instances of & in
string are replaced with the matching portion of pattern.

Quoting any part of string inhibits replacement in the expansion of the quoted portion, in‐
cluding replacement strings stored in shell variables. Backslash escapes & in string; the
backslash is removed in order to permit a literal & in the replacement string. Backslash can
also be used to escape a backslash; \\ results in a literal backslash in the replacement.
Users should take care if string is double-quoted to avoid unwanted interactions between the
backslash and double-quoting, since backslash has special meaning within double quotes. Pat‐
tern substitution performs the check for unquoted & after expanding string; shell programmers
should quote any occurrences of & they want to be taken literally in the replacement and en‐
sure any instances of & they want to be replaced are unquoted.

Like the pattern removal operators, double quotes surrounding the replacement string quote the
expanded characters, while double quotes enclosing the entire parameter substitution do not,
since the expansion is performed in a context that doesn't take any enclosing double quotes
into account.

If the nocasematch shell option is enabled, the match is performed without regard to the case
of alphabetic characters.

If parameter is @ or *, the substitution operation is applied to each positional parameter in
turn, and the expansion is the resultant list. If parameter is an array variable subscripted
with @ or *, the substitution operation is applied to each member of the array in turn, and
the expansion is the resultant list.

${parameter^pattern}
${parameter^^pattern}
${parameter,pattern}
${parameter,,pattern}
Case modification. This expansion modifies the case of alphabetic characters in parameter.
First, the pattern is expanded to produce a pattern as described below under Pattern Matching.
Bash then examines characters in the expanded value of parameter against pattern as described
below. If a character matches the pattern, its case is converted. The pattern should not at‐
tempt to match more than one character.

Using “^” converts lowercase letters matching pattern to uppercase; “,” converts matching up‐
percase letters to lowercase. The ^ and , variants examine the first character in the ex‐
panded value and convert its case if it matches pattern; the ^^ and ,, variants examine all
characters in the expanded value and convert each one that matches pattern. If pattern is
omitted, it is treated like a ?, which matches every character.

If parameter is @ or *, the case modification operation is applied to each positional parame‐
ter in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list. If parameter is an array variable sub‐
scripted with @ or *, the case modification operation is applied to each member of the array
in turn, and the expansion is the resultant list.

${parameter@operator}
Parameter transformation. The expansion is either a transformation of the value of parameter
or information about parameter itself, depending on the value of operator. Each operator is a
single letter:
U The expansion is a string that is the value of parameter with lowercase alphabetic
characters converted to uppercase.
u The expansion is a string that is the value of parameter with the first character con‐
verted to uppercase, if it is alphabetic.
L The expansion is a string that is the value of parameter with uppercase alphabetic
characters converted to lowercase.
Q The expansion is a string that is the value of parameter quoted in a format that can be
reused as input.
E The expansion is a string that is the value of parameter with backslash escape se‐
quences expanded as with the $'...' quoting mechanism.
P The expansion is a string that is the result of expanding the value of parameter as if
it were a prompt string (see PROMPTING below).
A The expansion is a string in the form of an assignment statement or declare command
that, if evaluated, recreates parameter with its attributes and value.
K Produces a possibly-quoted version of the value of parameter, except that it prints the
values of indexed and associative arrays as a sequence of quoted key-value pairs (see
Arrays above). The keys and values are quoted in a format that can be reused as input.
a The expansion is a string consisting of flag values representing parameter's attrib‐
utes.
k Like the K transformation, but expands the keys and values of indexed and associative
arrays to separate words after word splitting.

If parameter is @ or *, the operation is applied to each positional parameter in turn, and the
expansion is the resultant list. If parameter is an array variable subscripted with @ or *,
the operation is applied to each member of the array in turn, and the expansion is the resul‐
tant list.

The result of the expansion is subject to word splitting and pathname expansion as described
below.

Command Substitution
Command substitution allows the output of a command to replace the command itself. There are two
standard forms:

$(command)
or (deprecated)
`command`.

Bash performs the expansion by executing command in a subshell environment and replacing the command
substitution with the standard output of the command, with any trailing newlines deleted. Embedded
newlines are not deleted, but they may be removed during word splitting. The command substitution
$(cat file) can be replaced by the equivalent but faster $(< file).

With the old-style backquote form of substitution, backslash retains its literal meaning except when
followed by $, `, or \. The first backquote not preceded by a backslash terminates the command sub‐
stitution. When using the $(command) form, all characters between the parentheses make up the com‐
mand; none are treated specially.

There is an alternate form of command substitution:

${c command;}

which executes command in the current execution environment and captures its output, again with
trailing newlines removed.

The character c following the open brace must be a space, tab, newline, or |, and the close brace
must be in a position where a reserved word may appear (i.e., preceded by a command terminator such
as semicolon). Bash allows the close brace to be joined to the remaining characters in the word
without being followed by a shell metacharacter as a reserved word would usually require.

Any side effects of command take effect immediately in the current execution environment and persist
in the current environment after the command completes (e.g., the exit builtin exits the shell).

This type of command substitution superficially resembles executing an unnamed shell function: local
variables are created as when a shell function is executing, and the return builtin forces command to
complete; however, the rest of the execution environment, including the positional parameters, is
shared with the caller.

If the first character following the open brace is a |, the construct expands to the value of the RE‐
PLY shell variable after command executes, without removing any trailing newlines, and the standard
output of command remains the same as in the calling shell. Bash creates REPLY as an initially-unset
local variable when command executes, and restores REPLY to the value it had before the command sub‐
stitution after command completes, as with any local variable.

Command substitutions may be nested. To nest when using the backquoted form, escape the inner back‐
quotes with backslashes.

If the substitution appears within double quotes, bash does not perform word splitting and pathname
expansion on the results.

Arithmetic Expansion
Arithmetic expansion evaluates an arithmetic expression and substitutes the result. The format for
arithmetic expansion is:

$((expression))

The old format $[expression] is deprecated and will be removed in upcoming versions of bash.

The expression undergoes the same expansions as if it were within double quotes, but unescaped double
quote characters in expression are not treated specially and are removed. All tokens in the expres‐
sion undergo parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, and quote removal. The result
is treated as the arithmetic expression to be evaluated. Since the way Bash handles double quotes
can potentially result in empty strings, arithmetic expansion treats those as expressions that evalu‐
ate to 0. Arithmetic expansions may be nested.

The evaluation is performed according to the rules listed below under ARITHMETIC EVALUATION. If ex‐
pression is invalid, bash prints a message to standard error indicating failure, does not perform the
substitution, and does not execute the command associated with the expansion.

Process Substitution
Process substitution allows a process's input or output to be referred to using a filename. It takes
the form of <(list) or >(list). The process list is run asynchronously, and its input or output ap‐
pears as a filename. This filename is passed as an argument to the current command as the result of
the expansion.

If the >(list) form is used, writing to the file provides input for list. If the <(list) form is
used, reading the file obtains the output of list. No space may appear between the < or > and the
left parenthesis, otherwise the construct would be interpreted as a redirection.

Process substitution is supported on systems that support named pipes (FIFOs) or the /dev/fd method
of naming open files.

When available, process substitution is performed simultaneously with parameter and variable expan‐
sion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion.

Word Splitting
The shell scans the results of parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion
that did not occur within double quotes for word splitting. Words that were not expanded are not
split.

The shell treats each character of IFS as a delimiter, and splits the results of the other expansions
into words using these characters as field terminators.

An IFS whitespace character is whitespace as defined above (see Definitions) that appears in the
value of IFS. Space, tab, and newline are always considered IFS whitespace, even if they don't ap‐
pear in the locale's space category.

If IFS is unset, field splitting acts as if its value were , and treats these
characters as IFS whitespace. If the value of IFS is null, no word splitting occurs, but implicit
null arguments (see below) are still removed.

Word splitting begins by removing sequences of IFS whitespace characters from the beginning and end
of the results of the previous expansions, then splits the remaining words.

If the value of IFS consists solely of IFS whitespace, any sequence of IFS whitespace characters de‐
limits a field, so a field consists of characters that are not unquoted IFS whitespace, and null
fields result only from quoting.

If IFS contains a non-whitespace character, then any character in the value of IFS that is not IFS
whitespace, along with any adjacent IFS whitespace characters, delimits a field. This means that ad‐
jacent non-IFS-whitespace delimiters produce a null field. A sequence of IFS whitespace characters
also delimits a field.

Explicit null arguments ("" or '') are retained and passed to commands as empty strings. Unquoted
implicit null arguments, resulting from the expansion of parameters that have no values, are removed.
Expanding a parameter with no value within double quotes produces a null field, which is retained and
passed to a command as an empty string.

When a quoted null argument appears as part of a word whose expansion is non-null, word splitting re‐
moves the null argument portion, leaving the non-null expansion. That is, the word “-d''” becomes
“-d” after word splitting and null argument removal.

Pathname Expansion
After word splitting, unless the -f option has been set, bash scans each word for the characters *,
?, and [. If one of these characters appears, and is not quoted, then the word is regarded as a pat‐
tern, and replaced with a sorted list of filenames matching the pattern (see Pattern Matching below)
subject to the value of the GLOBSORT shell variable.

If no matching filenames are found, and the shell option nullglob is not enabled, the word is left
unchanged. If the nullglob option is set, and no matches are found, the word is removed. If the
failglob shell option is set, and no matches are found, bash prints an error message and does not ex‐
ecute the command. If the shell option nocaseglob is enabled, the match is performed without regard
to the case of alphabetic characters. Note that when using range expressions like [a-z] (see below),
letters of the other case may be included, depending on the setting of LC_COLLATE.

When a pattern is used for pathname expansion, the character “.” at the start of a name or immedi‐
ately following a slash must be matched explicitly, unless the shell option dotglob is set. In order
to match the filenames . and .., the pattern must begin with “.” (for example, “.?”), even if dotglob
is set. If the globskipdots shell option is enabled, the filenames . and .. never match, even if the
pattern begins with a “.”. When not matching pathnames, the “.” character is not treated specially.

When matching a pathname, the slash character must always be matched explicitly by a slash in the
pattern, but in other matching contexts it can be matched by a special pattern character as described
below under Pattern Matching.

See the description of shopt below under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS for a description of the nocaseglob,
nullglob, globskipdots, failglob, and dotglob shell options.

The GLOBIGNORE shell variable may be used to restrict the set of file names matching a pattern. If
GLOBIGNORE is set, each matching file name that also matches one of the patterns in GLOBIGNORE is re‐
moved from the list of matches. If the nocaseglob option is set, the matching against the patterns
in GLOBIGNORE is performed without regard to case. The filenames . and .. are always ignored when
GLOBIGNORE is set and not null. However, setting GLOBIGNORE to a non-null value has the effect of
enabling the dotglob shell option, so all other filenames beginning with a “.” match. To get the old
behavior of ignoring filenames beginning with a “.”, make “.*” one of the patterns in GLOBIGNORE.
The dotglob option is disabled when GLOBIGNORE is unset. The GLOBIGNORE pattern matching honors the
setting of the extglob shell option.

The value of the GLOBSORT shell variable controls how the results of pathname expansion are sorted,
as described above under Shell Variables.

Pattern Matching

Any character that appears in a pattern, other than the special pattern characters described below,
matches itself. The NUL character may not occur in a pattern. A backslash escapes the following
character; the escaping backslash is discarded when matching. The special pattern characters must be
quoted if they are to be matched literally.

The special pattern characters have the following meanings:

* Matches any string, including the null string. When the globstar shell option is en‐
abled, and * is used in a pathname expansion context, two adjacent *s used as a single
pattern match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. If followed
by a /, two adjacent *s match only directories and subdirectories.
? Matches any single character.
[...] Matches any one of the characters enclosed between the brackets. This is known as a
bracket expression and matches a single character. A pair of characters separated by a
hyphen denotes a range expression; any character that falls between those two charac‐
ters, inclusive, using the current locale's collating sequence and character set,
matches. If the first character following the [ is a ! or a ^ then any character not
within the range matches. To match a -, include it as the first or last character in
the set. To match a ], include it as the first character in the set.

The sorting order of characters in range expressions, and the characters included in
the range, are determined by the current locale and the values of the LC_COLLATE or
LC_ALL shell variables, if set. To obtain the traditional interpretation of range ex‐
pressions, where [a-d] is equivalent to [abcd], set the value of the LC_COLLATE or
LC_ALL shell variables to C, or enable the globasciiranges shell option.

Within a bracket expression, character classes can be specified using the syntax
[:class:], where class is one of the following classes defined in the POSIX standard:

alnum alpha ascii blank cntrl digit graph lower print punct space upper word xdigit

A character class matches any character belonging to that class. The word character
class matches letters, digits, and the character _.

Within a bracket expression, an equivalence class can be specified using the syntax
[=c=], which matches all characters with the same collation weight (as defined by the
current locale) as the character c.

Within a bracket expression, the syntax [.symbol.] matches the collating symbol symbol.

If the extglob shell option is enabled using the shopt builtin, the shell recognizes several extended
pattern matching operators. In the following description, a pattern-list is a list of one or more
patterns separated by a |. Composite patterns may be formed using one or more of the following sub-
patterns:

?(pattern-list)
Matches zero or one occurrence of the given patterns.
*(pattern-list)
Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns.
+(pattern-list)
Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns.
@(pattern-list)
Matches one of the given patterns.
!(pattern-list)
Matches anything except one of the given patterns.

The extglob option changes the behavior of the parser, since the parentheses are normally treated as
operators with syntactic meaning. To ensure that extended matching patterns are parsed correctly,
make sure that extglob is enabled before parsing constructs containing the patterns, including shell
functions and command substitutions.

When matching filenames, the dotglob shell option determines the set of filenames that are tested:
when dotglob is enabled, the set of filenames includes all files beginning with “.”, but . and ..
must be matched by a pattern or sub-pattern that begins with a dot; when it is disabled, the set does
not include any filenames beginning with “.” unless the pattern or sub-pattern begins with a “.”. If
the globskipdots shell option is enabled, the filenames . and .. never appear in the set. As above,
“.” only has a special meaning when matching filenames.

Complicated extended pattern matching against long strings is slow, especially when the patterns con‐
tain alternations and the strings contain multiple matches. Using separate matches against shorter
strings, or using arrays of strings instead of a single long string, may be faster.

Quote Removal
After the preceding expansions, all unquoted occurrences of the characters \, ', and " that did not
result from one of the above expansions are removed.

REDIRECTION
Before a command is executed, its input and output may be redirected using a special notation inter‐
preted by the shell. Redirection allows commands' file handles to be duplicated, opened, closed,
made to refer to different files, and can change the files the command reads from and writes to.
When used with the exec builtin, redirections modify file handles in the current shell execution en‐
vironment. The following redirection operators may precede or appear anywhere within a simple com‐
mand or may follow a command. Redirections are processed in the order they appear, from left to
right.

Each redirection that may be preceded by a file descriptor number may instead be preceded by a word
of the form {varname}. In this case, for each redirection operator except >&- and <&-, the shell al‐
locates a file descriptor greater than or equal to 10 and assigns it to varname. If {varname} pre‐
cedes >&- or <&-, the value of varname defines the file descriptor to close. If {varname} is sup‐
plied, the redirection persists beyond the scope of the command, which allows the shell programmer to
manage the file descriptor's lifetime manually without using the exec builtin. The varredir_close
shell option manages this behavior.

In the following descriptions, if the file descriptor number is omitted, and the first character of
the redirection operator is “<”, the redirection refers to the standard input (file descriptor 0).
If the first character of the redirection operator is “>”, the redirection refers to the standard
output (file descriptor 1).

The word following the redirection operator in the following descriptions, unless otherwise noted, is
subjected to brace expansion, tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, command substitu‐
tion, arithmetic expansion, quote removal, pathname expansion, and word splitting. If it expands to
more than one word, bash reports an error.

The order of redirections is significant. For example, the command

ls > dirlist 2>&1

directs both standard output and standard error to the file dirlist, while the command

ls 2>&1 > dirlist

directs only the standard output to file dirlist, because the standard error was directed to the
standard output before the standard output was redirected to dirlist.

Bash handles several filenames specially when they are used in redirections, as described in the fol‐
lowing table. If the operating system on which bash is running provides these special files, bash
uses them; otherwise it emulates them internally with the behavior described below.

/dev/fd/fd
If fd is a valid integer, duplicate file descriptor fd.
/dev/stdin
File descriptor 0 is duplicated.
/dev/stdout
File descriptor 1 is duplicated.
/dev/stderr
File descriptor 2 is duplicated.
/dev/tcp/host/port
If host is a valid hostname or Internet address, and port is an integer port number or
service name, bash attempts to open the corresponding TCP socket.
/dev/udp/host/port
If host is a valid hostname or Internet address, and port is an integer port number or
service name, bash attempts to open the corresponding UDP socket.

A failure to open or create a file causes the redirection to fail.

Redirections using file descriptors greater than 9 should be used with care, as they may conflict
with file descriptors the shell uses internally.

Note that the exec builtin command can make redirections take effect in the current shell.

Redirecting Input
Redirecting input opens the file whose name results from the expansion of word for reading on file
descriptor n, or the standard input (file descriptor 0) if n is not specified.

The general format for redirecting input is:

[n]word

If the redirection operator is >, and the noclobber option to the set builtin command has been en‐
abled, the redirection fails if the file whose name results from the expansion of word exists and is
a regular file. If the redirection operator is >|, or the redirection operator is > and the noclob‐
ber option to the set builtin is not enabled, bash attempts the redirection even if the file named by
word exists.

Appending Redirected Output
Redirecting output in this fashion opens the file whose name results from the expansion of word for
appending on file descriptor n, or the standard output (file descriptor 1) if n is not specified. If
the file does not exist it is created.

The general format for appending output is:

[n]>>word

Redirecting Standard Output and Standard Error
This construct redirects both the standard output (file descriptor 1) and the standard error output
(file descriptor 2) to the file whose name is the expansion of word.

There are two formats for redirecting standard output and standard error:

&>word
and
>&word

Of the two forms, the first is preferred. This is semantically equivalent to

>word 2>&1

When using the second form, word may not expand to a number or -. If it does, other redirection op‐
erators apply (see Duplicating File Descriptors below) for compatibility reasons.

Appending Standard Output and Standard Error
This construct appends both the standard output (file descriptor 1) and the standard error output
(file descriptor 2) to the file whose name is the expansion of word.

The format for appending standard output and standard error is:

&>>word

This is semantically equivalent to

>>word 2>&1

(see Duplicating File Descriptors below).

Here Documents
This type of redirection instructs the shell to read input from the current source until it reads a
line containing only delimiter (with no trailing blanks). All of the lines read up to that point
then become the standard input (or file descriptor n if n is specified) for a command.

The format of here-documents is:

[n]<<[-]word
here-document
delimiter

The shell does not perform parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expan‐
sion, or pathname expansion on word.

If any part of word is quoted, the delimiter is the result of quote removal on word, and the lines in
the here-document are not expanded. If word is unquoted, the delimiter is word itself, and the here-
document text is treated similarly to a double-quoted string: all lines of the here-document are sub‐
jected to parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion, the character sequence
\ is treated literally, and \ must be used to quote the characters \, $, and `; however,
double quote characters have no special meaning.

If the redirection operator is <<-, then the shell strips all leading tab characters from input lines
and the line containing delimiter. This allows here-documents within shell scripts to be indented in
a natural fashion.

If the delimiter is not quoted, the \ sequence is treated as a line continuation: the two
lines are joined and the backslash-newline is removed. This happens while reading the here-document,
before the check for the ending delimiter, so joined lines can form the end delimiter.

Here Strings
A variant of here documents, the format is:

[n]<<&word

is used similarly to duplicate output file descriptors. If n is not specified, this uses the stan‐
dard output (file descriptor 1). It is a redirection error if the digits in word do not specify a
file descriptor open for output. If word evaluates to -, file descriptor n is closed. As a special
case, if n is omitted, and word does not expand to one or more digits or -, this redirects the stan‐
dard output and standard error as described previously.

Moving File Descriptors
The redirection operator

[n]<&digit-

moves the file descriptor digit to file descriptor n, or the standard input (file descriptor 0) if n
is not specified. digit is closed after being duplicated to n.

Similarly, the redirection operator

[n]>&digit-

moves the file descriptor digit to file descriptor n, or the standard output (file descriptor 1) if n
is not specified.

Opening File Descriptors for Reading and Writing
The redirection operator

[n]<>word

opens the file whose name is the expansion of word for both reading and writing on file descriptor n,
or on file descriptor 0 if n is not specified. If the file does not exist, it is created.

ALIASES
Aliases allow a string to be substituted for a word that is in a position in the input where it can
be the first word of a simple command. Aliases have names and corresponding values that are set and
unset using the alias and unalias builtin commands (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).

If the shell reads an unquoted word in the right position, it checks the word to see if it matches an
alias name. If it matches, the shell replaces the word with the alias value, and reads that value as
if it had been read instead of the word. The shell doesn't look at any characters following the word
before attempting alias substitution.

The characters /, $, `, and = and any of the shell metacharacters or quoting characters listed above
may not appear in an alias name. The replacement text may contain any valid shell input, including
shell metacharacters. The first word of the replacement text is tested for aliases, but a word that
is identical to an alias being expanded is not expanded a second time. This means that one may alias
ls to ls -F, for instance, and bash does not try to recursively expand the replacement text.

If the last character of the alias value is a blank, the shell checks the next command word following
the alias for alias expansion.

Aliases are created and listed with the alias command, and removed with the unalias command.

There is no mechanism for using arguments in the replacement text. If arguments are needed, use a
shell function (see FUNCTIONS below) instead.

Aliases are not expanded when the shell is not interactive, unless the expand_aliases shell option is
set using shopt (see the description of shopt under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).

The rules concerning the definition and use of aliases are somewhat confusing. Bash always reads at
least one complete line of input, and all lines that make up a compound command, before executing any
of the commands on that line or the compound command. Aliases are expanded when a command is read,
not when it is executed. Therefore, an alias definition appearing on the same line as another com‐
mand does not take effect until the shell reads the next line of input, and an alias definition in a
compound command does not take effect until the shell parses and executes the entire compound com‐
mand. The commands following the alias definition on that line, or in the rest of a compound com‐
mand, are not affected by the new alias. This behavior is also an issue when functions are executed.
Aliases are expanded when a function definition is read, not when the function is executed, because a
function definition is itself a command. As a consequence, aliases defined in a function are not
available until after that function is executed. To be safe, always put alias definitions on a sepa‐
rate line, and do not use alias in compound commands.

For almost every purpose, shell functions are preferable to aliases.

FUNCTIONS
A shell function, defined as described above under SHELL GRAMMAR, stores a series of commands for
later execution. When the name of a shell function is used as a simple command name, the shell exe‐
cutes the list of commands associated with that function name. Functions are executed in the context
of the calling shell; there is no new process created to interpret them (contrast this with the exe‐
cution of a shell script).

When a function is executed, the arguments to the function become the positional parameters during
its execution. The special parameter # is updated to reflect the new positional parameters. Special
parameter 0 is unchanged. The first element of the FUNCNAME variable is set to the name of the func‐
tion while the function is executing.

All other aspects of the shell execution environment are identical between a function and its caller
with these exceptions: the DEBUG and RETURN traps (see the description of the trap builtin under
SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) are not inherited unless the function has been given the trace at‐
tribute (see the description of the declare builtin below) or the -o functrace shell option has been
enabled with the set builtin (in which case all functions inherit the DEBUG and RETURN traps), and
the ERR trap is not inherited unless the -o errtrace shell option has been enabled.

Variables local to the function are declared with the local builtin command (local variables). Ordi‐
narily, variables and their values are shared between the function and its caller. If a variable is
declared local, the variable's visible scope is restricted to that function and its children (includ‐
ing the functions it calls).

In the following description, the current scope is a currently- executing function. Previous scopes
consist of that function's caller and so on, back to the “global” scope, where the shell is not exe‐
cuting any shell function. A local variable at the current scope is a variable declared using the
local or declare builtins in the function that is currently executing.

Local variables “shadow” variables with the same name declared at previous scopes. For instance, a
local variable declared in a function hides variables with the same name declared at previous scopes,
including global variables: references and assignments refer to the local variable, leaving the vari‐
ables at previous scopes unmodified. When the function returns, the global variable is once again
visible.

The shell uses dynamic scoping to control a variable's visibility within functions. With dynamic
scoping, visible variables and their values are a result of the sequence of function calls that
caused execution to reach the current function. The value of a variable that a function sees depends
on its value within its caller, if any, whether that caller is the global scope or another shell
function. This is also the value that a local variable declaration shadows, and the value that is
restored when the function returns.

For example, if a variable var is declared as local in function func1, and func1 calls another func‐
tion func2, references to var made from within func2 resolve to the local variable var from func1,
shadowing any global variable named var.

The unset builtin also acts using the same dynamic scope: if a variable is local to the current
scope, unset unsets it; otherwise the unset will refer to the variable found in any calling scope as
described above. If a variable at the current local scope is unset, it remains so (appearing as un‐
set) until it is reset in that scope or until the function returns. Once the function returns, any
instance of the variable at a previous scope becomes visible. If the unset acts on a variable at a
previous scope, any instance of a variable with that name that had been shadowed becomes visible (see
below how the localvar_unset shell option changes this behavior).

The FUNCNEST variable, if set to a numeric value greater than 0, defines a maximum function nesting
level. Function invocations that exceed the limit cause the entire command to abort.

If the builtin command return is executed in a function, the function completes and execution resumes
with the next command after the function call. If return is supplied a numeric argument, that is the
function's return status; otherwise the function's return status is the exit status of the last com‐
mand executed before the return. Any command associated with the RETURN trap is executed before exe‐
cution resumes. When a function completes, the values of the positional parameters and the special
parameter # are restored to the values they had prior to the function's execution.

The -f option to the declare or typeset builtin commands lists function names and definitions. The
-F option to declare or typeset lists the function names only (and optionally the source file and
line number, if the extdebug shell option is enabled). Functions may be exported so that child shell
processes (those created when executing a separate shell invocation) automatically have them defined
with the -f option to the export builtin. The -f option to the unset builtin deletes a function def‐
inition.

Functions may be recursive. The FUNCNEST variable may be used to limit the depth of the function
call stack and restrict the number of function invocations. By default, bash imposes no limit on the
number of recursive calls.

ARITHMETIC EVALUATION
The shell allows arithmetic expressions to be evaluated, under certain circumstances (see the let and
declare builtin commands, the (( compound command, the arithmetic for command, the [[ conditional
command, and Arithmetic Expansion).

Evaluation is done in the largest fixed-width integers available, with no check for overflow, though
division by 0 is trapped and flagged as an error. The operators and their precedence, associativity,
and values are the same as in the C language. The following list of operators is grouped into levels
of equal-precedence operators. The levels are listed in order of decreasing precedence.

id++ id--
variable post-increment and post-decrement
++id --id
variable pre-increment and pre-decrement
- + unary minus and plus
! ~ logical and bitwise negation
** exponentiation
* / % multiplication, division, remainder
+ - addition, subtraction
<< >> left and right bitwise shifts
<= >= < >
comparison
== != equality and inequality
& bitwise AND
^ bitwise exclusive OR
| bitwise OR
&& logical AND
|| logical OR
expr?expr:expr
conditional operator
= *= /= %= += -= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
assignment
expr1 , expr2
comma

Shell variables are allowed as operands; parameter expansion is performed before the expression is
evaluated. Within an expression, shell variables may also be referenced by name without using the
parameter expansion syntax. This means you can use "x", where x is a shell variable name, in an
arithmetic expression, and the shell will evaluate its value as an expression and use the result. A
shell variable that is null or unset evaluates to 0 when referenced by name in an expression.

The value of a variable is evaluated as an arithmetic expression when it is referenced, or when a
variable which has been given the integer attribute using declare -i is assigned a value. A null
value evaluates to 0. A shell variable need not have its integer attribute turned on to be used in
an expression.

Integer constants follow the C language definition, without suffixes or character constants. Con‐
stants with a leading 0 are interpreted as octal numbers. A leading 0x or 0X denotes hexadecimal.
Otherwise, numbers take the form [base#]n, where the optional base is a decimal number between 2 and
64 representing the arithmetic base, and n is a number in that base. If base# is omitted, then base
10 is used. When specifying n, if a non-digit is required, the digits greater than 9 are represented
by the lowercase letters, the uppercase letters, @, and _, in that order. If base is less than or
equal to 36, lowercase and uppercase letters may be used interchangeably to represent numbers between
10 and 35.

Operators are evaluated in precedence order. Sub-expressions in parentheses are evaluated first and
may override the precedence rules above.

CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS
Conditional expressions are used by the [[ compound command and the test and [ builtin commands to
test file attributes and perform string and arithmetic comparisons. The test and [ commands deter‐
mine their behavior based on the number of arguments; see the descriptions of those commands for any
other command-specific actions.

Expressions are formed from the unary or binary primaries listed below. Unary expressions are often
used to examine the status of a file or shell variable. Binary operators are used for string, nu‐
meric, and file attribute comparisons.

Bash handles several filenames specially when they are used in expressions. If the operating system
on which bash is running provides these special files, bash will use them; otherwise it will emulate
them internally with this behavior: If any file argument to one of the primaries is of the form
/dev/fd/n, then bash checks file descriptor n. If the file argument to one of the primaries is one
of /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout, or /dev/stderr, bash checks file descriptor 0, 1, or 2, respectively.

Unless otherwise specified, primaries that operate on files follow symbolic links and operate on the
target of the link, rather than the link itself.

When used with [[, or when the shell is in posix mode, the < and > operators sort lexicographically
using the current locale. When the shell is not in posix mode, the test command sorts using ASCII
ordering.

-a file
True if file exists.
-b file
True if file exists and is a block special file.
-c file
True if file exists and is a character special file.
-d file
True if file exists and is a directory.
-e file
True if file exists.
-f file
True if file exists and is a regular file.
-g file
True if file exists and is set-group-id.
-h file
True if file exists and is a symbolic link.
-k file
True if file exists and its “sticky” bit is set.
-p file
True if file exists and is a named pipe (FIFO).
-r file
True if file exists and is readable.
-s file
True if file exists and has a size greater than zero.
-t fd True if file descriptor fd is open and refers to a terminal.
-u file
True if file exists and its set-user-id bit is set.
-w file
True if file exists and is writable.
-x file
True if file exists and is executable.
-G file
True if file exists and is owned by the effective group id.
-L file
True if file exists and is a symbolic link.
-N file
True if file exists and has been modified since it was last accessed.
-O file
True if file exists and is owned by the effective user id.
-S file
True if file exists and is a socket.
-o optname
True if the shell option optname is enabled. See the list of options under the description of
the -o option to the set builtin below.
-v varname
True if the shell variable varname is set (has been assigned a value). If varname is an in‐
dexed array variable name subscripted by @ or *, this returns true if the array has any set
elements. If varname is an associative array variable name subscripted by @ or *, this re‐
turns true if an element with that key is set.
-R varname
True if the shell variable varname is set and is a name reference.
-z string
True if the length of string is zero.
string
-n string
True if the length of string is non-zero.

string1 == string2
string1 = string2
True if the strings are equal. = should be used with the test command for POSIX conformance.
When used with the [[ command, this performs pattern matching as described above (Compound
Commands).
string1 != string2
True if the strings are not equal.
string1 < string2
True if string1 sorts before string2 lexicographically.
string1 > string2
True if string1 sorts after string2 lexicographically.

file1 -ef file2
True if file1 and file2 refer to the same device and inode numbers.
file1 -nt file2
True if file1 is newer (according to modification date) than file2, or if file1 exists and
file2 does not.
file1 -ot file2
True if file1 is older than file2, or if file2 exists and file1 does not.

arg1 OP arg2
OP is one of -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt, or -ge. These arithmetic binary operators return true
if arg1 is equal to, not equal to, less than, less than or equal to, greater than, or greater
than or equal to arg2, respectively. arg1 and arg2 may be positive or negative integers.
When used with the [[ command, arg1 and arg2 are evaluated as arithmetic expressions (see
ARITHMETIC EVALUATION above). Since the expansions the [[ command performs on arg1 and arg2
can potentially result in empty strings, arithmetic expression evaluation treats those as ex‐
pressions that evaluate to 0.

SIMPLE COMMAND EXPANSION
When the shell executes a simple command, it performs the following expansions, assignments, and
redirections, from left to right, in the following order.

1. The words that the parser has marked as variable assignments (those preceding the command
name) and redirections are saved for later processing.

2. The words that are not variable assignments or redirections are expanded. If any words remain
after expansion, the first word is taken to be the name of the command and the remaining words
are the arguments.

3. Redirections are performed as described above under REDIRECTION.

4. The text after the = in each variable assignment undergoes tilde expansion, parameter expan‐
sion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal before being assigned to
the variable.

If no command name results, the variable assignments affect the current shell environment. In the
case of such a command (one that consists only of assignment statements and redirections), assignment
statements are performed before redirections. Otherwise, the variables are added to the environment
of the executed command and do not affect the current shell environment. If any of the assignments
attempts to assign a value to a readonly variable, an error occurs, and the command exits with a non-
zero status.

If no command name results, redirections are performed, but do not affect the current shell environ‐
ment. A redirection error causes the command to exit with a non-zero status.

If there is a command name left after expansion, execution proceeds as described below. Otherwise,
the command exits. If one of the expansions contained a command substitution, the exit status of the
command is the exit status of the last command substitution performed. If there were no command sub‐
stitutions, the command exits with a zero status.

COMMAND EXECUTION
After a command has been split into words, if it results in a simple command and an optional list of
arguments, the shell performs the following actions.

If the command name contains no slashes, the shell attempts to locate it. If there exists a shell
function by that name, that function is invoked as described above in FUNCTIONS. If the name does
not match a function, the shell searches for it in the list of shell builtins. If a match is found,
that builtin is invoked.

If the name is neither a shell function nor a builtin, and contains no slashes, bash searches each
element of the PATH for a directory containing an executable file by that name. Bash uses a hash ta‐
ble to remember the full pathnames of executable files (see hash under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
Bash performs a full search of the directories in PATH only if the command is not found in the hash
table. If the search is unsuccessful, the shell searches for a defined shell function named com‐
mand_not_found_handle. If that function exists, it is invoked in a separate execution environment
with the original command and the original command's arguments as its arguments, and the function's
exit status becomes the exit status of that subshell. If that function is not defined, the shell
prints an error message and returns an exit status of 127.

If the search is successful, or if the command name contains one or more slashes, the shell executes
the named program in a separate execution environment. Argument 0 is set to the name given, and the
remaining arguments to the command are set to the arguments given, if any.

If this execution fails because the file is not in executable format, and the file is not a direc‐
tory, it is assumed to be a shell script, a file containing shell commands, and the shell creates a
new instance of itself to execute it. Bash tries to determine whether the file is a text file or a
binary, and will not execute files it determines to be binaries. This subshell reinitializes itself,
so that the effect is as if a new shell had been invoked to handle the script, with the exception
that the locations of commands remembered by the parent (see hash below under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS
are retained by the child.

If the program is a file beginning with #!, the remainder of the first line specifies an interpreter
for the program. The shell executes the specified interpreter on operating systems that do not han‐
dle this executable format themselves. The arguments to the interpreter consist of a single optional
argument following the interpreter name on the first line of the program, followed by the name of the
program, followed by the command arguments, if any.

COMMAND EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT
The shell has an execution environment, which consists of the following:

• Open files inherited by the shell at invocation, as modified by redirections supplied to the
exec builtin.

• The current working directory as set by cd, pushd, or popd, or inherited by the shell at invo‐
cation.

• The file creation mode mask as set by umask or inherited from the shell's parent.

• Current traps set by trap.

• Shell parameters that are set by variable assignment or with set or inherited from the shell's
parent in the environment.

• Shell functions defined during execution or inherited from the shell's parent in the environ‐
ment.

• Options enabled at invocation (either by default or with command-line arguments) or by set.

• Options enabled by shopt.

• Shell aliases defined with alias.

• Various process IDs, including those of background jobs, the value of $$, and the value of
PPID.

When a simple command other than a builtin or shell function is to be executed, it is invoked in a
separate execution environment that consists of the following. Unless otherwise noted, the values
are inherited from the shell.

• The shell's open files, plus any modifications and additions specified by redirections to the
command.

• The current working directory.

• The file creation mode mask.

• Shell variables and functions marked for export, along with variables exported for the com‐
mand, passed in the environment.

• Traps caught by the shell are reset to the values inherited from the shell's parent, and traps
ignored by the shell are ignored.

A command invoked in this separate environment cannot affect the shell's execution environment.

A subshell is a copy of the shell process.

Command substitution, commands grouped with parentheses, and asynchronous commands are invoked in a
subshell environment that is a duplicate of the shell environment, except that traps caught by the
shell are reset to the values that the shell inherited from its parent at invocation. Builtin com‐
mands that are invoked as part of a pipeline, except possibly in the last element depending on the
value of the lastpipe shell option, are also executed in a subshell environment. Changes made to the
subshell environment cannot affect the shell's execution environment.

When the shell is in posix mode, subshells spawned to execute command substitutions inherit the value
of the -e option from their parent shell. When not in posix mode, bash clears the -e option in such
subshells. See the description of the inherit_errexit shell option below for how to control this be‐
havior when not in posix mode.

If a command is followed by a & and job control is not active, the default standard input for the
command is the empty file /dev/null. Otherwise, the invoked command inherits the file descriptors of
the calling shell as modified by redirections.

ENVIRONMENT
When a program is invoked it is given an array of strings called the environment. This is a list of
name-value pairs, of the form name=value.

The shell provides several ways to manipulate the environment. On invocation, the shell scans its
own environment and creates a parameter for each name found, automatically marking it for export to
child processes. Executed commands inherit the environment. The export, declare -x, and unset com‐
mands modify the environment by adding and deleting parameters and functions. If the value of a pa‐
rameter in the environment is modified, the new value automatically becomes part of the environment,
replacing the old. The environment inherited by any executed command consists of the shell's initial
environment, whose values may be modified in the shell, less any pairs removed by the unset or export
-n commands, plus any additions via the export and declare -x commands.

If any parameter assignments, as described above in PARAMETERS, appear before a simple command, the
variable assignments are part of that command's environment for as long as it executes. These as‐
signment statements affect only the environment seen by that command. If these assignments precede a
call to a shell function, the variables are local to the function and exported to that function's
children.

If the -k option is set (see the set builtin command below), then all parameter assignments are
placed in the environment for a command, not just those that precede the command name.

When bash invokes an external command, the variable _ is set to the full pathname of the command and
passed to that command in its environment.

EXIT STATUS
The exit status of an executed command is the value returned by the waitpid system call or equivalent
function. Exit statuses fall between 0 and 255, though, as explained below, the shell may use values
above 125 specially. Exit statuses from shell builtins and compound commands are also limited to
this range. Under certain circumstances, the shell will use special values to indicate specific
failure modes.

For the shell's purposes, a command which exits with a zero exit status has succeeded. So while an
exit status of zero indicates success, a non-zero exit status indicates failure.

When a command terminates on a fatal signal N, bash uses the value of 128+N as the exit status.

If a command is not found, the child process created to execute it returns a status of 127. If a
command is found but is not executable, the return status is 126.

If a command fails because of an error during expansion or redirection, the exit status is greater
than zero.

Shell builtin commands return a status of 0 (true) if successful, and non-zero (false) if an error
occurs while they execute. All builtins return an exit status of 2 to indicate incorrect usage, gen‐
erally invalid options or missing arguments.

The exit status of the last command is available in the special parameter $?.

Bash itself returns the exit status of the last command executed, unless a syntax error occurs, in
which case it exits with a non-zero value. See also the exit builtin command below.

SIGNALS
When bash is interactive, in the absence of any traps, it ignores SIGTERM (so that kill 0 does not
kill an interactive shell), and catches and handles SIGINT (so that the wait builtin is interrupt‐
ible). When bash receives SIGINT, it breaks out of any executing loops. In all cases, bash ignores
SIGQUIT. If job control is in effect, bash ignores SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, and SIGTSTP.

The trap builtin modifies the shell's signal handling, as described below.

Non-builtin commands bash executes have signal handlers set to the values inherited by the shell from
its parent, unless trap sets them to be ignored, in which case the child process will ignore them as
well. When job control is not in effect, asynchronous commands ignore SIGINT and SIGQUIT in addition
to these inherited handlers. Commands run as a result of command substitution ignore the keyboard-
generated job control signals SIGTTIN, SIGTTOU, and SIGTSTP.

The shell exits by default upon receipt of a SIGHUP. Before exiting, an interactive shell resends
the SIGHUP to all jobs, running or stopped. The shell sends SIGCONT to stopped jobs to ensure that
they receive the SIGHUP (see JOB CONTROL below for more information about running and stopped jobs).
To prevent the shell from sending the signal to a particular job, remove it from the jobs table with
the disown builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) or mark it not to receive SIGHUP using disown
-h.

If the huponexit shell option has been set using shopt, bash sends a SIGHUP to all jobs when an in‐
teractive login shell exits.

If bash is waiting for a command to complete and receives a signal for which a trap has been set, it
will not execute the trap until the command completes. If bash is waiting for an asynchronous com‐
mand via the wait builtin, and it receives a signal for which a trap has been set, the wait builtin
will return immediately with an exit status greater than 128, immediately after which the shell exe‐
cutes the trap.

When job control is not enabled, and bash is waiting for a foreground command to complete, the shell
receives keyboard-generated signals such as SIGINT (usually generated by ^C) that users commonly in‐
tend to send to that command. This happens because the shell and the command are in the same process
group as the terminal, and ^C sends SIGINT to all processes in that process group. Since bash does
not enable job control by default when the shell is not interactive, this scenario is most common in
non-interactive shells.

When job control is enabled, and bash is waiting for a foreground command to complete, the shell does
not receive keyboard-generated signals, because it is not in the same process group as the terminal.
This scenario is most common in interactive shells, where bash attempts to enable job control by de‐
fault. See JOB CONTROL below for more information about process groups.

When job control is not enabled, and bash receives SIGINT while waiting for a foreground command, it
waits until that foreground command terminates and then decides what to do about the SIGINT:

1. If the command terminates due to the SIGINT, bash concludes that the user meant to send the
SIGINT to the shell as well, and acts on the SIGINT (e.g., by running a SIGINT trap, exiting a
non-interactive shell, or returning to the top level to read a new command).

2. If the command does not terminate due to SIGINT, the program handled the SIGINT itself and did
not treat it as a fatal signal. In that case, bash does not treat SIGINT as a fatal signal,
either, instead assuming that the SIGINT was used as part of the program's normal operation
(e.g., emacs uses it to abort editing commands) or deliberately discarded. However, bash will
run any trap set on SIGINT, as it does with any other trapped signal it receives while it is
waiting for the foreground command to complete, for compatibility.

When job control is enabled, bash does not receive keyboard-generated signals such as SIGINT while it
is waiting for a foreground command. An interactive shell does not pay attention to the SIGINT, even
if the foreground command terminates as a result, other than noting its exit status. If the shell is
not interactive, and the foreground command terminates due to the SIGINT, bash pretends it received
the SIGINT itself (scenario 1 above), for compatibility.

JOB CONTROL
Job control refers to the ability to selectively stop (suspend) the execution of processes and con‐
tinue (resume) their execution at a later point. A user typically employs this facility via an in‐
teractive interface supplied jointly by the operating system kernel's terminal driver and bash.

The shell associates a job with each pipeline. It keeps a table of currently executing jobs, which
the jobs command will display. Each job has a job number, which jobs displays between brackets. Job
numbers start at 1. When bash starts a job asynchronously (in the background), it prints a line that
looks like:

[1] 25647

indicating that this job is job number 1 and that the process ID of the last process in the pipeline
associated with this job is 25647. All of the processes in a single pipeline are members of the same
job. Bash uses the job abstraction as the basis for job control.

To facilitate the implementation of the user interface to job control, each process has a process
group ID, and the operating system maintains the notion of a current terminal process group ID. This
terminal process group ID is associated with the controlling terminal.

Processes that have the same process group ID are said to be part of the same process group. Members
of the foreground process group (processes whose process group ID is equal to the current terminal
process group ID) receive keyboard-generated signals such as SIGINT. Processes in the foreground
process group are said to be foreground processes. Background processes are those whose process
group ID differs from the controlling terminal's; such processes are immune to keyboard-generated
signals. Only foreground processes are allowed to read from or, if the user so specifies with “stty
tostop”, write to the controlling terminal. The system sends a SIGTTIN (SIGTTOU) signal to back‐
ground processes which attempt to read from (write to when “tostop” is in effect) the terminal,
which, unless caught, suspends the process.

If the operating system on which bash is running supports job control, bash contains facilities to
use it. Typing the suspend character (typically ^Z, Control-Z) while a process is running stops that
process and returns control to bash. Typing the delayed suspend character (typically ^Y, Control-Y)
causes the process stop when it attempts to read input from the terminal, and returns control to
bash. The user then manipulates the state of this job, using the bg command to continue it in the
background, the fg command to continue it in the foreground, or the kill command to kill it. The
suspend character takes effect immediately, and has the additional side effect of discarding any
pending output and typeahead. To force a background process to stop, or stop a process that's not
associated with the current terminal session, send it the SIGSTOP signal using kill.

There are a number of ways to refer to a job in the shell. The % character introduces a job specifi‐
cation (jobspec).

Job number n may be referred to as %n. A job may also be referred to using a prefix of the name used
to start it, or using a substring that appears in its command line. For example, %ce refers to a job
whose command name begins with ce. Using %?ce, on the other hand, refers to any job containing the
string ce in its command line. If the prefix or substring matches more than one job, bash reports an
error.

The symbols %% and %+ refer to the shell's notion of the current job. A single % (with no accompany‐
ing job specification) also refers to the current job. %- refers to the previous job. When a job
starts in the background, a job stops while in the foreground, or a job is resumed in the background,
it becomes the current job. The job that was the current job becomes the previous job. When the
current job terminates, the previous job becomes the current job. If there is only a single job, %+
and %- can both be used to refer to that job. In output pertaining to jobs (e.g., the output of the
jobs command), the current job is always marked with a +, and the previous job with a -.

Simply naming a job can be used to bring it into the foreground: %1 is a synonym for “fg %1”, bring‐
ing job 1 from the background into the foreground. Similarly, “%1 &” resumes job 1 in the back‐
ground, equivalent to “bg %1”.

The shell learns immediately whenever a job changes state. Normally, bash waits until it is about to
print a prompt before notifying the user about changes in a job's status so as to not interrupt any
other output, though it will notify of changes in a job's status after a foreground command in a list
completes, before executing the next command in the list. If the -b option to the set builtin com‐
mand is enabled, bash reports status changes immediately. Bash executes any trap on SIGCHLD for each
child that terminates.

When a job terminates and bash notifies the user about it, bash removes the job from the table. It
will not appear in jobs output, but wait will report its exit status, as long as it's supplied the
process ID associated with the job as an argument. When the table is empty, job numbers start over
at 1.

If a user attempts to exit bash while jobs are stopped (or, if the checkjobs shell option has been
enabled using the shopt builtin, running), the shell prints a warning message, and, if the checkjobs
option is enabled, lists the jobs and their statuses. The jobs command may then be used to inspect
their status. If the user immediately attempts to exit again, without an intervening command, bash
does not print another warning, and terminates any stopped jobs.

When the shell is waiting for a job or process using the wait builtin, and job control is enabled,
wait will return when the job changes state. The -f option causes wait to wait until the job or
process terminates before returning.

PROMPTING
When executing interactively, bash displays the primary prompt PS1 when it is ready to read a com‐
mand, and the secondary prompt PS2 when it needs more input to complete a command.

Bash examines the value of the array variable PROMPT_COMMAND just before printing each primary
prompt. If any elements in PROMPT_COMMAND are set and non-null, Bash executes each value, in numeric
order, just as if it had been typed on the command line. Bash displays PS0 after it reads a command
but before executing it.

Bash displays PS4 as described above before tracing each command when the -x option is enabled.

Bash allows the prompt strings PS0, PS1, PS2, and PS4, to be customized by inserting a number of
backslash-escaped special characters that are decoded as follows:

\a An ASCII bell character (07).
\d The date in “Weekday Month Date” format (e.g., “Tue May 26”).
\D{format}
The format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into the prompt string;
an empty format results in a locale-specific time representation. The braces are re‐
quired.
\e An ASCII escape character (033).
\h The hostname up to the first “.”.
\H The hostname.
\j The number of jobs currently managed by the shell.
\l The basename of the shell's terminal device name (e.g., “ttys0”).
\n A newline.
\r A carriage return.
\s The name of the shell: the basename of $0 (the portion following the final slash).
\t The current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format.
\T The current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format.
\@ The current time in 12-hour am/pm format.
\A The current time in 24-hour HH:MM format.
\u The username of the current user.
\v The bash version (e.g., 2.00).
\V The bash release, version + patch level (e.g., 2.00.0)
\w The value of the PWD shell variable ($PWD), with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde (uses
the value of the PROMPT_DIRTRIM variable).
\W The basename of $PWD, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde.
\! The history number of this command.
\# The command number of this command.
\$ If the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $.
\nnn The character corresponding to the octal number nnn.
\\ A backslash.
\[ Begin a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed a terminal
control sequence into the prompt.
\] End a sequence of non-printing characters.

The command number and the history number are usually different: the history number of a command is
its position in the history list, which may include commands restored from the history file (see HIS‐
TORY below), while the command number is the position in the sequence of commands executed during the
current shell session. After the string is decoded, it is expanded via parameter expansion, command
substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal, subject to the value of the promptvars shell
option (see the description of the shopt command under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). This can have
unwanted side effects if escaped portions of the string appear within command substitution or contain
characters special to word expansion.

READLINE
This is the library that handles reading input when using an interactive shell, unless the --noedit‐
ing option is supplied at shell invocation. Line editing is also used when using the -e option to
the read builtin. By default, the line editing commands are similar to those of emacs; a vi-style
line editing interface is also available. Line editing can be enabled at any time using the -o emacs
or -o vi options to the set builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). To turn off line editing af‐
ter the shell is running, use the +o emacs or +o vi options to the set builtin.

Readline Notation
This section uses Emacs-style editing concepts and uses its notation for keystrokes. Control keys
are denoted by C-key, e.g., C-n means Control-N. Similarly, meta keys are denoted by M-key, so M-x
means Meta-X. The Meta key is often labeled “Alt” or “Option”.

On keyboards without a Meta key, M-x means ESC x, i.e., press and release the Escape key, then press
and release the x key, in sequence. This makes ESC the meta prefix. The combination M-C-x means ESC
Control-x: press and release the Escape key, then press and hold the Control key while pressing the x
key, then release both.

On some keyboards, the Meta key modifier produces characters with the eighth bit (0200) set. You can
use the enable-meta-key variable to control whether or not it does this, if the keyboard allows it.
On many others, the terminal or terminal emulator converts the metafied key to a key sequence begin‐
ning with ESC as described in the preceding paragraph.

If your Meta key produces a key sequence with the ESC meta prefix, you can make M-key key bindings
you specify (see Readline Key Bindings below) do the same thing by setting the force-meta-prefix
variable.

Readline commands may be given numeric arguments, which normally act as a repeat count. Sometimes,
however, it is the sign of the argument that is significant. Passing a negative argument to a com‐
mand that acts in the forward direction (e.g., kill-line) makes that command act in a backward direc‐
tion. Commands whose behavior with arguments deviates from this are noted below.

The point is the current cursor position, and mark refers to a saved cursor position. The text be‐
tween the point and mark is referred to as the region. Readline has the concept of an active region:
when the region is active, readline redisplay highlights the region using the value of the active-re‐
gion-start-color variable. The enable-active-region variable turns this on and off. Several com‐
mands set the region to active; those are noted below.

When a command is described as killing text, the text deleted is saved for possible future retrieval
(yanking). The killed text is saved in a kill ring. Consecutive kills accumulate the deleted text
into one unit, which can be yanked all at once. Commands which do not kill text separate the chunks
of text on the kill ring.

Readline Initialization
Readline is customized by putting commands in an initialization file (the inputrc file). The name of
this file is taken from the value of the INPUTRC shell variable. If that variable is unset, the de‐
fault is ~/.inputrc. If that file does not exist or cannot be read, readline looks for
/etc/inputrc. When a program that uses the readline library starts up, readline reads the initial‐
ization file and sets the key bindings and variables found there, before reading any user input.

There are only a few basic constructs allowed in the inputrc file. Blank lines are ignored. Lines
beginning with a # are comments. Lines beginning with a $ indicate conditional constructs. Other
lines denote key bindings and variable settings.

The default key-bindings in this section may be changed using key binding commands in the inputrc
file. Programs that use the readline library, including bash, may add their own commands and bind‐
ings.

For example, placing

M-Control-u: universal-argument
or
C-Meta-u: universal-argument

into the inputrc would make M-C-u execute the readline command universal-argument.

Key bindings may contain the following symbolic character names: DEL, ESC, ESCAPE, LFD, NEWLINE, RET,
RETURN, RUBOUT (a destructive backspace), SPACE, SPC, and TAB.

In addition to command names, readline allows keys to be bound to a string that is inserted when the
key is pressed (a macro). The difference between a macro and a command is that a macro is enclosed
in single or double quotes.

Readline Key Bindings
The syntax for controlling key bindings in the inputrc file is simple. All that is required is the
name of the command or the text of a macro and a key sequence to which it should be bound. The key
sequence may be specified in one of two ways: as a symbolic key name, possibly with Meta- or Control-
prefixes, or as a key sequence composed of one or more characters enclosed in double quotes. The key
sequence and name are separated by a colon. There can be no whitespace between the name and the
colon.

When using the form keyname:function-name or macro, keyname is the name of a key spelled out in Eng‐
lish. For example:

Control-u: universal-argument
Meta-Rubout: backward-kill-word
Control-o: "> output"

In the above example, C-u is bound to the function universal-argument, M-DEL is bound to the function
backward-kill-word, and C-o is bound to run the macro expressed on the right hand side (that is, to
insert the text “> output” into the line).

In the second form, "keyseq":function-name or macro, keyseq differs from keyname above in that
strings denoting an entire key sequence may be specified by placing the sequence within double
quotes. Some GNU Emacs style key escapes can be used, as in the following example, but none of the
symbolic character names are recognized.

"\C-u": universal-argument
"\C-x\C-r": re-read-init-file
"\e[11~": "Function Key 1"

In this example, C-u is again bound to the function universal-argument. C-x C-r is bound to the
function re-read-init-file, and ESC [ 1 1 ~ is bound to insert the text “Function Key 1”.

The full set of GNU Emacs style escape sequences available when specifying key sequences is
\C- A control prefix.
\M- Adding the meta prefix or converting the following character to a meta character, as
described below under force-meta-prefix.
\e An escape character.
\\ Backslash.
\" Literal ", a double quote.
\' Literal ', a single quote.

In addition to the GNU Emacs style escape sequences, a second set of backslash escapes is available:
\a alert (bell)
\b backspace
\d delete
\f form feed
\n newline
\r carriage return
\t horizontal tab
\v vertical tab
\nnn The eight-bit character whose value is the octal value nnn (one to three digits).
\xHH The eight-bit character whose value is the hexadecimal value HH (one or two hex dig‐
its).

When entering the text of a macro, single or double quotes must be used to indicate a macro defini‐
tion. Unquoted text is assumed to be a function name. The backslash escapes described above are ex‐
panded in the macro body. Backslash quotes any other character in the macro text, including " and '.

Bash will display or modify the current readline key bindings with the bind builtin command. The -o
emacs or -o vi options to the set builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) change the editing mode
during interactive use.

Readline Variables
Readline has variables that can be used to further customize its behavior. A variable may be set in
the inputrc file with a statement of the form

set variable-name value
or using the bind builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).

Except where noted, readline variables can take the values On or Off (without regard to case). Un‐
recognized variable names are ignored. When readline reads a variable value, empty or null values,
“on” (case-insensitive), and “1” are equivalent to On. All other values are equivalent to Off.

The bind -V command lists the current readline variable names and values (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS
below).

The variables and their default values are:

active-region-start-color
A string variable that controls the text color and background when displaying the text in the
active region (see the description of enable-active-region below). This string must not take
up any physical character positions on the display, so it should consist only of terminal es‐
cape sequences. It is output to the terminal before displaying the text in the active region.
This variable is reset to the default value whenever the terminal type changes. The default
value is the string that puts the terminal in standout mode, as obtained from the terminal's
terminfo description. A sample value might be “\e[01;33m”.
active-region-end-color
A string variable that “undoes” the effects of active-region-start-color and restores “normal”
terminal display appearance after displaying text in the active region. This string must not
take up any physical character positions on the display, so it should consist only of terminal
escape sequences. It is output to the terminal after displaying the text in the active re‐
gion. This variable is reset to the default value whenever the terminal type changes. The
default value is the string that restores the terminal from standout mode, as obtained from
the terminal's terminfo description. A sample value might be “\e[0m”.
bell-style (audible)
Controls what happens when readline wants to ring the terminal bell. If set to none, readline
never rings the bell. If set to visible, readline uses a visible bell if one is available.
If set to audible, readline attempts to ring the terminal's bell.
bind-tty-special-chars (On)
If set to On, readline attempts to bind the control characters that are treated specially by
the kernel's terminal driver to their readline equivalents. These override the default read‐
line bindings described here. Type “stty -a” at a bash prompt to see your current terminal
settings, including the special control characters (usually cchars).
blink-matching-paren (Off)
If set to On, readline attempts to briefly move the cursor to an opening parenthesis when a
closing parenthesis is inserted.
colored-completion-prefix (Off)
If set to On, when listing completions, readline displays the common prefix of the set of pos‐
sible completions using a different color. The color definitions are taken from the value of
the LS_COLORS environment variable. If there is a color definition in $LS_COLORS for the cus‐
tom suffix “.readline-colored-completion-prefix”, readline uses this color for the common pre‐
fix instead of its default.
colored-stats (Off)
If set to On, readline displays possible completions using different colors to indicate their
file type. The color definitions are taken from the value of the LS_COLORS environment vari‐
able.
comment-begin (“#”)
The string that the readline insert-comment command inserts. This command is bound to M-# in
emacs mode and to # in vi command mode.
completion-display-width (-1)
The number of screen columns used to display possible matches when performing completion. The
value is ignored if it is less than 0 or greater than the terminal screen width. A value of 0
causes matches to be displayed one per line. The default value is -1.
completion-ignore-case (Off)
If set to On, readline performs filename matching and completion in a case-insensitive fash‐
ion.
completion-map-case (Off)
If set to On, and completion-ignore-case is enabled, readline treats hyphens (-) and under‐
scores (_) as equivalent when performing case-insensitive filename matching and completion.
completion-prefix-display-length (0)
The maximum length in characters of the common prefix of a list of possible completions that
is displayed without modification. When set to a value greater than zero, readline replaces
common prefixes longer than this value with an ellipsis when displaying possible completions.
If a completion begins with a period, and eadline is completing filenames, it uses three un‐
derscores instead of an ellipsis.
completion-query-items (100)
This determines when the user is queried about viewing the number of possible completions gen‐
erated by the possible-completions command. It may be set to any integer value greater than
or equal to zero. If the number of possible completions is greater than or equal to the value
of this variable, readline asks whether or not the user wishes to view them; otherwise read‐
line simply lists them on the terminal. A zero value means readline should never ask; nega‐
tive values are treated as zero.
convert-meta (On)
If set to On, readline converts characters it reads that have the eighth bit set to an ASCII
key sequence by clearing the eighth bit and prefixing it with an escape character (converting
the character to have the meta prefix). The default is On, but readline sets it to Off if the
locale contains characters whose encodings may include bytes with the eighth bit set. This
variable is dependent on the LC_CTYPE locale category, and may change if the locale changes.
This variable also affects key bindings; see the description of force-meta-prefix below.
disable-completion (Off)
If set to On, readline inhibits word completion. Completion characters are inserted into the
line as if they had been mapped to self-insert.
echo-control-characters (On)
When set to On, on operating systems that indicate they support it, readline echoes a charac‐
ter corresponding to a signal generated from the keyboard.
editing-mode (emacs)
Controls whether readline uses a set of key bindings similar to Emacs or vi. editing-mode can
be set to either emacs or vi.
emacs-mode-string (@)
If the show-mode-in-prompt variable is enabled, this string is displayed immediately before
the last line of the primary prompt when emacs editing mode is active. The value is expanded
like a key binding, so the standard set of meta- and control- prefixes and backslash escape
sequences is available. The \1 and \2 escapes begin and end sequences of non-printing charac‐
ters, which can be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the mode string.
enable-active-region (On)
When this variable is set to On, readline allows certain commands to designate the region as
active. When the region is active, readline highlights the text in the region using the value
of the active-region-start-color variable, which defaults to the string that enables the ter‐
minal's standout mode. The active region shows the text inserted by bracketed-paste and any
matching text found by incremental and non-incremental history searches.
enable-bracketed-paste (On)
When set to On, readline configures the terminal to insert each paste into the editing buffer
as a single string of characters, instead of treating each character as if it had been read
from the keyboard. This is called bracketed-paste mode; it prevents readline from executing
any editing commands bound to key sequences appearing in the pasted text.
enable-keypad (Off)
When set to On, readline tries to enable the application keypad when it is called. Some sys‐
tems need this to enable the arrow keys.
enable-meta-key (On)
When set to On, readline tries to enable any meta modifier key the terminal claims to support.
On many terminals, the Meta key is used to send eight-bit characters; this variable checks for
the terminal capability that indicates the terminal can enable and disable a mode that sets
the eighth bit of a character (0200) if the Meta key is held down when the character is typed
(a meta character).
expand-tilde (Off)
If set to On, readline performs tilde expansion when it attempts word completion.
force-meta-prefix (Off)
If set to On, readline modifies its behavior when binding key sequences containing \M- or
Meta- (see Key Bindings above) by converting a key sequence of the form \M-C or Meta-C to the
two-character sequence ESC C (adding the meta prefix). If force-meta-prefix is set to Off
(the default), readline uses the value of the convert-meta variable to determine whether to
perform this conversion: if convert-meta is On, readline performs the conversion described
above; if it is Off, readline converts C to a meta character by setting the eighth bit (0200).
history-preserve-point (Off)
If set to On, the history code attempts to place point at the same location on each history
line retrieved with previous-history or next-history.
history-size (unset)
Set the maximum number of history entries saved in the history list. If set to zero, any ex‐
isting history entries are deleted and no new entries are saved. If set to a value less than
zero, the number of history entries is not limited. By default, bash sets the maximum number
of history entries to the value of the HISTSIZE shell variable. Setting history-size to a
non-numeric value will set the maximum number of history entries to 500.
horizontal-scroll-mode (Off)
Setting this variable to On makes readline use a single line for display, scrolling the input
horizontally on a single screen line when it becomes longer than the screen width rather than
wrapping to a new line. This setting is automatically enabled for terminals of height 1.
input-meta (Off)
If set to On, readline enables eight-bit input (that is, it does not clear the eighth bit in
the characters it reads), regardless of what the terminal claims it can support. The default
is Off, but readline sets it to On if the locale contains characters whose encodings may in‐
clude bytes with the eighth bit set. This variable is dependent on the LC_CTYPE locale cate‐
gory, and its value may change if the locale changes. The name meta-flag is a synonym for in‐
put-meta.
isearch-terminators (“C-[C-j”)
The string of characters that should terminate an incremental search without subsequently exe‐
cuting the character as a command. If this variable has not been given a value, the charac‐
ters ESC and C-j terminate an incremental search.
keymap (emacs)
Set the current readline keymap. The set of valid keymap names is emacs, emacs-standard,
emacs-meta, emacs-ctlx, vi, vi-command, and vi-insert. vi is equivalent to vi-command; emacs
is equivalent to emacs-standard. The default value is emacs; the value of editing-mode also
affects the default keymap.
keyseq-timeout (500)
Specifies the duration readline will wait for a character when reading an ambiguous key se‐
quence (one that can form a complete key sequence using the input read so far, or can take ad‐
ditional input to complete a longer key sequence). If readline does not receive any input
within the timeout, it uses the shorter but complete key sequence. The value is specified in
milliseconds, so a value of 1000 means that readline will wait one second for additional in‐
put. If this variable is set to a value less than or equal to zero, or to a non-numeric
value, readline waits until another key is pressed to decide which key sequence to complete.
mark-directories (On)
If set to On, completed directory names have a slash appended.
mark-modified-lines (Off)
If set to On, readline displays history lines that have been modified with a preceding aster‐
isk (*).
mark-symlinked-directories (Off)
If set to On, completed names which are symbolic links to directories have a slash appended,
subject to the value of mark-directories.
match-hidden-files (On)
This variable, when set to On, forces readline to match files whose names begin with a “.”
(hidden files) when performing filename completion. If set to Off, the user must include the
leading “.” in the filename to be completed.
menu-complete-display-prefix (Off)
If set to On, menu completion displays the common prefix of the list of possible completions
(which may be empty) before cycling through the list.
output-meta (Off)
If set to On, readline displays characters with the eighth bit set directly rather than as a
meta-prefixed escape sequence. The default is Off, but readline sets it to On if the locale
contains characters whose encodings may include bytes with the eighth bit set. This variable
is dependent on the LC_CTYPE locale category, and its value may change if the locale changes.
page-completions (On)
If set to On, readline uses an internal pager resembling more(1) to display a screenful of
possible completions at a time.
prefer-visible-bell
See bell-style.
print-completions-horizontally (Off)
If set to On, readline displays completions with matches sorted horizontally in alphabetical
order, rather than down the screen.
revert-all-at-newline (Off)
If set to On, readline will undo all changes to history lines before returning when executing
accept-line. By default, history lines may be modified and retain individual undo lists
across calls to readline.
search-ignore-case (Off)
If set to On, readline performs incremental and non-incremental history list searches in a
case-insensitive fashion.
show-all-if-ambiguous (Off)
This alters the default behavior of the completion functions. If set to On, words which have
more than one possible completion cause the matches to be listed immediately instead of ring‐
ing the bell.
show-all-if-unmodified (Off)
This alters the default behavior of the completion functions in a fashion similar to
show-all-if-ambiguous. If set to On, words which have more than one possible completion with‐
out any possible partial completion (the possible completions don't share a common prefix)
cause the matches to be listed immediately instead of ringing the bell.
show-mode-in-prompt (Off)
If set to On, add a string to the beginning of the prompt indicating the editing mode: emacs,
vi command, or vi insertion. The mode strings are user-settable (e.g., emacs-mode-string).
skip-completed-text (Off)
If set to On, this alters the default completion behavior when inserting a single match into
the line. It's only active when performing completion in the middle of a word. If enabled,
readline does not insert characters from the completion that match characters after point in
the word being completed, so portions of the word following the cursor are not duplicated.
vi-cmd-mode-string ((cmd))
If the show-mode-in-prompt variable is enabled, this string is displayed immediately before
the last line of the primary prompt when vi editing mode is active and in command mode. The
value is expanded like a key binding, so the standard set of meta- and control- prefixes and
backslash escape sequences is available. The \1 and \2 escapes begin and end sequences of
non-printing characters, which can be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the mode
string.
vi-ins-mode-string ((ins))
If the show-mode-in-prompt variable is enabled, this string is displayed immediately before
the last line of the primary prompt when vi editing mode is active and in insertion mode. The
value is expanded like a key binding, so the standard set of meta- and control- prefixes and
backslash escape sequences is available. The \1 and \2 escapes begin and end sequences of
non-printing characters, which can be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the mode
string.
visible-stats (Off)
If set to On, a character denoting a file's type as reported by stat(2) is appended to the
filename when listing possible completions.

Readline Conditional Constructs
Readline implements a facility similar in spirit to the conditional compilation features of the C
preprocessor which allows key bindings and variable settings to be performed as the result of tests.
There are four parser directives available.

$if The $if construct allows bindings to be made based on the editing mode, the terminal being
used, or the application using readline. The text of the test, after any comparison operator,
extends to the end of the line; unless otherwise noted, no characters are required to isolate
it.

mode The mode= form of the $if directive is used to test whether readline is in emacs or vi
mode. This may be used in conjunction with the set keymap command, for instance, to
set bindings in the emacs-standard and emacs-ctlx keymaps only if readline is starting
out in emacs mode.

term The term= form may be used to include terminal-specific key bindings, perhaps to bind
the key sequences output by the terminal's function keys. The word on the right side
of the = is tested against both the full name of the terminal and the portion of the
terminal name before the first -. This allows xterm to match both xterm and
xterm-256color, for instance.

version
The version test may be used to perform comparisons against specific readline versions.
The version expands to the current readline version. The set of comparison operators
includes =, (and ==), !=, <=, >=, <, and >. The version number supplied on the right
side of the operator consists of a major version number, an optional decimal point, and
an optional minor version (e.g., 7.1). If the minor version is omitted, it defaults to
0. The operator may be separated from the string version and from the version number
argument by whitespace.

application
The application construct is used to include application-specific settings. Each pro‐
gram using the readline library sets the application name, and an initialization file
can test for a particular value. This could be used to bind key sequences to functions
useful for a specific program. For instance, the following command adds a key sequence
that quotes the current or previous word in bash:

$if Bash
# Quote the current or previous word
"\C-xq": "\eb\"\ef\""
$endif

variable
The variable construct provides simple equality tests for readline variables and val‐
ues. The permitted comparison operators are =, ==, and !=. The variable name must be
separated from the comparison operator by whitespace; the operator may be separated
from the value on the right hand side by whitespace. String and boolean variables may
be tested. Boolean variables must be tested against the values on and off.

$else Commands in this branch of the $if directive are executed if the test fails.

$endif This command, as seen in the previous example, terminates an $if command.

$include
This directive takes a single filename as an argument and reads commands and key bindings from
that file. For example, the following directive would read /etc/inputrc:

$include /etc/inputrc

Searching
Readline provides commands for searching through the command history (see HISTORY below) for lines
containing a specified string. There are two search modes: incremental and non-incremental.

Incremental searches begin before the user has finished typing the search string. As each character
of the search string is typed, readline displays the next entry from the history matching the string
typed so far. An incremental search requires only as many characters as needed to find the desired
history entry. When using emacs editing mode, type C-r to search backward in the history for a par‐
ticular string. Typing C-s searches forward through the history. The characters present in the
value of the isearch-terminators variable are used to terminate an incremental search. If that vari‐
able has not been assigned a value, ESC and C-j terminate an incremental search. C-g aborts an in‐
cremental search and restores the original line. When the search is terminated, the history entry
containing the search string becomes the current line.

To find other matching entries in the history list, type C-r or C-s as appropriate. This searches
backward or forward in the history for the next entry matching the search string typed so far. Any
other key sequence bound to a readline command terminates the search and executes that command. For
instance, a newline terminates the search and accepts the line, thereby executing the command from
the history list. A movement command will terminate the search, make the last line found the current
line, and begin editing.

Readline remembers the last incremental search string. If two C-rs are typed without any intervening
characters defining a new search string, readline uses any remembered search string.

Non-incremental searches read the entire search string before starting to search for matching history
entries. The search string may be typed by the user or be part of the contents of the current line.

Readline Command Names
The following is a list of the names of the commands and the default key sequences to which they are
bound. Command names without an accompanying key sequence are unbound by default.

In the following descriptions, point refers to the current cursor position, and mark refers to a cur‐
sor position saved by the set-mark command. The text between the point and mark is referred to as
the region. Readline has the concept of an active region: when the region is active, readline redis‐
play highlights the region using the value of the active-region-start-color variable. The enable-ac‐
tive-region readline variable turns this on and off. Several commands set the region to active;
those are noted below.

Commands for Moving
beginning-of-line (C-a)
Move to the start of the current line. This may also be bound to the Home key on some key‐
boards.
end-of-line (C-e)
Move to the end of the line. This may also be bound to the End key on some keyboards.
forward-char (C-f)
Move forward a character. This may also be bound to the right arrow key on some keyboards.
backward-char (C-b)
Move back a character. This may also be bound to the left arrow key on some keyboards.
forward-word (M-f)
Move forward to the end of the next word. Words are composed of alphanumeric characters (let‐
ters and digits).
backward-word (M-b)
Move back to the start of the current or previous word. Words are composed of alphanumeric
characters (letters and digits).
shell-forward-word (M-C-f)
Move forward to the end of the next word. Words are delimited by non-quoted shell metacharac‐
ters.
shell-backward-word (M-C-b)
Move back to the start of the current or previous word. Words are delimited by non-quoted
shell metacharacters.
previous-screen-line
Attempt to move point to the same physical screen column on the previous physical screen line.
This will not have the desired effect if the current readline line does not take up more than
one physical line or if point is not greater than the length of the prompt plus the screen
width.
next-screen-line
Attempt to move point to the same physical screen column on the next physical screen line.
This will not have the desired effect if the current readline line does not take up more than
one physical line or if the length of the current readline line is not greater than the length
of the prompt plus the screen width.
clear-display (M-C-l)
Clear the screen and, if possible, the terminal's scrollback buffer, then redraw the current
line, leaving the current line at the top of the screen.
clear-screen (C-l)
Clear the screen, then redraw the current line, leaving the current line at the top of the
screen. With a numeric argument, refresh the current line without clearing the screen.
redraw-current-line
Refresh the current line.

Commands for Manipulating the History
accept-line (Newline, Return)
Accept the line regardless of where the cursor is. If this line is non-empty, add it to the
history list according to the state of the HISTCONTROL and HISTIGNORE variables. If the line
is a modified history line, restore the history line to its original state.
previous-history (C-p)
Fetch the previous command from the history list, moving back in the list. This may also be
bound to the up arrow key on some keyboards.
next-history (C-n)
Fetch the next command from the history list, moving forward in the list. This may also be
bound to the down arrow key on some keyboards.
beginning-of-history (M-<)
Move to the first line in the history.
end-of-history (M->)
Move to the end of the input history, i.e., the line currently being entered.
operate-and-get-next (C-o)
Accept the current line for execution as if a newline had been entered, and fetch the next
line relative to the current line from the history for editing. A numeric argument, if sup‐
plied, specifies the history entry to use instead of the current line.
fetch-history
With a numeric argument, fetch that entry from the history list and make it the current line.
Without an argument, move back to the first entry in the history list.
reverse-search-history (C-r)
Search backward starting at the current line and moving “up” through the history as necessary.
This is an incremental search. This command sets the region to the matched text and activates
the region.
forward-search-history (C-s)
Search forward starting at the current line and moving “down” through the history as neces‐
sary. This is an incremental search. This command sets the region to the matched text and
activates the region.
non-incremental-reverse-search-history (M-p)
Search backward through the history starting at the current line using a non-incremental
search for a string supplied by the user. The search string may match anywhere in a history
line.
non-incremental-forward-search-history (M-n)
Search forward through the history using a non-incremental search for a string supplied by the
user. The search string may match anywhere in a history line.
history-search-backward
Search backward through the history for the string of characters between the start of the cur‐
rent line and the point. The search string must match at the beginning of a history line.
This is a non-incremental search. This may be bound to the Page Up key on some keyboards.
history-search-forward
Search forward through the history for the string of characters between the start of the cur‐
rent line and the point. The search string must match at the beginning of a history line.
This is a non-incremental search. This may be bound to the Page Down key on some keyboards.
history-substring-search-backward
Search backward through the history for the string of characters between the start of the cur‐
rent line and the point. The search string may match anywhere in a history line. This is a
non-incremental search.
history-substring-search-forward
Search forward through the history for the string of characters between the start of the cur‐
rent line and the point. The search string may match anywhere in a history line. This is a
non-incremental search.
yank-nth-arg (M-C-y)
Insert the first argument to the previous command (usually the second word on the previous
line) at point. With an argument n, insert the nth word from the previous command (the words
in the previous command begin with word 0). A negative argument inserts the nth word from the
end of the previous command. Once the argument n is computed, this uses the history expansion
facilities to extract the nth word, as if the “!n” history expansion had been specified.
yank-last-arg (M-., M-_)
Insert the last argument to the previous command (the last word of the previous history en‐
try). With a numeric argument, behave exactly like yank-nth-arg. Successive calls to
yank-last-arg move back through the history list, inserting the last word (or the word speci‐
fied by the argument to the first call) of each line in turn. Any numeric argument supplied
to these successive calls determines the direction to move through the history. A negative
argument switches the direction through the history (back or forward). This uses the history
expansion facilities to extract the last word, as if the “!$” history expansion had been spec‐
ified.
shell-expand-line (M-C-e)
Expand the line by performing shell word expansions. This performs alias and history expan‐
sion, $'string' and $"string" quoting, tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion,
arithmetic expansion, command and process substitution, word splitting, and quote removal. An
explicit argument suppresses command and process substitution. See HISTORY EXPANSION below
for a description of history expansion.
history-expand-line (M-^)
Perform history expansion on the current line. See HISTORY EXPANSION below for a description
of history expansion.
magic-space
Perform history expansion on the current line and insert a space. See HISTORY EXPANSION below
for a description of history expansion.
alias-expand-line
Perform alias expansion on the current line. See ALIASES above for a description of alias ex‐
pansion.
history-and-alias-expand-line
Perform history and alias expansion on the current line.
insert-last-argument (M-., M-_)
A synonym for yank-last-arg.
edit-and-execute-command (C-x C-e)
Invoke an editor on the current command line, and execute the result as shell commands. Bash
attempts to invoke $VISUAL, $EDITOR, and emacs as the editor, in that order.

Commands for Changing Text
end-of-file (usually C-d)
The character indicating end-of-file as set, for example, by stty(1). If this character is
read when there are no characters on the line, and point is at the beginning of the line,
readline interprets it as the end of input and returns EOF.
delete-char (C-d)
Delete the character at point. If this function is bound to the same character as the tty EOF
character, as C-d commonly is, see above for the effects. This may also be bound to the
Delete key on some keyboards.
backward-delete-char (Rubout)
Delete the character behind the cursor. When given a numeric argument, save the deleted text
on the kill ring.
forward-backward-delete-char
Delete the character under the cursor, unless the cursor is at the end of the line, in which
case the character behind the cursor is deleted.
quoted-insert (C-q, C-v)
Add the next character typed to the line verbatim. This is how to insert characters like C-q,
for example.
tab-insert (C-v TAB)
Insert a tab character.
self-insert (a, b, A, 1, !, ...)
Insert the character typed.
bracketed-paste-begin
This function is intended to be bound to the “bracketed paste” escape sequence sent by some
terminals, and such a binding is assigned by default. It allows readline to insert the pasted
text as a single unit without treating each character as if it had been read from the key‐
board. The pasted characters are inserted as if each one was bound to self-insert instead of
executing any editing commands.
Bracketed paste sets the region to the inserted text and activates the region.
transpose-chars (C-t)
Drag the character before point forward over the character at point, moving point forward as
well. If point is at the end of the line, then this transposes the two characters before
point. Negative arguments have no effect.
transpose-words (M-t)
Drag the word before point past the word after point, moving point past that word as well. If
point is at the end of the line, this transposes the last two words on the line.
shell-transpose-words (M-C-t)
Drag the word before point past the word after point, moving point past that word as well. If
the insertion point is at the end of the line, this transposes the last two words on the line.
Word boundaries are the same as shell-forward-word and shell-backward-word.
upcase-word (M-u)
Uppercase the current (or following) word. With a negative argument, uppercase the previous
word, but do not move point.
downcase-word (M-l)
Lowercase the current (or following) word. With a negative argument, lowercase the previous
word, but do not move point.
capitalize-word (M-c)
Capitalize the current (or following) word. With a negative argument, capitalize the previous
word, but do not move point.
overwrite-mode
Toggle overwrite mode. With an explicit positive numeric argument, switches to overwrite
mode. With an explicit non-positive numeric argument, switches to insert mode. This command
affects only emacs mode; vi mode does overwrite differently. Each call to readline() starts
in insert mode.
In overwrite mode, characters bound to self-insert replace the text at point rather than push‐
ing the text to the right. Characters bound to backward-delete-char replace the character be‐
fore point with a space. By default, this command is unbound, but may be bound to the Insert
key on some keyboards.

Killing and Yanking
kill-line (C-k)
Kill the text from point to the end of the current line. With a negative numeric argument,
kill backward from the cursor to the beginning of the line.
backward-kill-line (C-x Rubout)
Kill backward to the beginning of the current line. With a negative numeric argument, kill
forward from the cursor to the end of the line.
unix-line-discard (C-u)
Kill backward from point to the beginning of the line, saving the killed text on the kill-
ring.
kill-whole-line
Kill all characters on the current line, no matter where point is.
kill-word (M-d)
Kill from point to the end of the current word, or if between words, to the end of the next
word. Word boundaries are the same as those used by forward-word.
backward-kill-word (M-Rubout)
Kill the word behind point. Word boundaries are the same as those used by backward-word.
shell-kill-word (M-C-d)
Kill from point to the end of the current word, or if between words, to the end of the next
word. Word boundaries are the same as those used by shell-forward-word.
shell-backward-kill-word
Kill the word behind point. Word boundaries are the same as those used by shell-back‐
ward-word.
unix-word-rubout (C-w)
Kill the word behind point, using white space as a word boundary, saving the killed text on
the kill-ring.
unix-filename-rubout
Kill the word behind point, using white space and the slash character as the word boundaries,
saving the killed text on the kill-ring.
delete-horizontal-space (M-\)
Delete all spaces and tabs around point.
kill-region
Kill the text in the current region.
copy-region-as-kill
Copy the text in the region to the kill buffer, so it can be yanked immediately.
copy-backward-word
Copy the word before point to the kill buffer. The word boundaries are the same as back‐
ward-word.
copy-forward-word
Copy the word following point to the kill buffer. The word boundaries are the same as for‐
ward-word.
yank (C-y)
Yank the top of the kill ring into the buffer at point.
yank-pop (M-y)
Rotate the kill ring, and yank the new top. Only works following yank or yank-pop.

Numeric Arguments
digit-argument (M-0, M-1, ..., M--)
Add this digit to the argument already accumulating, or start a new argument. M-- starts a
negative argument.
universal-argument
This is another way to specify an argument. If this command is followed by one or more dig‐
its, optionally with a leading minus sign, those digits define the argument. If the command
is followed by digits, executing universal-argument again ends the numeric argument, but is
otherwise ignored. As a special case, if this command is immediately followed by a character
that is neither a digit nor minus sign, the argument count for the next command is multiplied
by four. The argument count is initially one, so executing this function the first time makes
the argument count four, a second time makes the argument count sixteen, and so on.

Completing
complete (TAB)
Attempt to perform completion on the text before point. Bash attempts completion by first
checking for any programmable completions for the command word (see Programmable Completion
below), otherwise treating the text as a variable (if the text begins with $), username (if
the text begins with ~), hostname (if the text begins with @), or command (including aliases,
functions, and builtins) in turn. If none of these produces a match, it falls back to file‐
name completion.
possible-completions (M-?)
List the possible completions of the text before point. When displaying completions, readline
sets the number of columns used for display to the value of completion-display-width, the
value of the shell variable COLUMNS, or the screen width, in that order.
insert-completions (M-*)
Insert all completions of the text before point that would have been generated by possi‐
ble-completions, separated by a space.
menu-complete
Similar to complete, but replaces the word to be completed with a single match from the list
of possible completions. Repeatedly executing menu-complete steps through the list of possi‐
ble completions, inserting each match in turn. At the end of the list of completions,
menu-complete rings the bell (subject to the setting of bell-style) and restores the original
text. An argument of n moves n positions forward in the list of matches; a negative argument
moves backward through the list. This command is intended to be bound to TAB, but is unbound
by default.
menu-complete-backward
Identical to menu-complete, but moves backward through the list of possible completions, as if
menu-complete had been given a negative argument. This command is unbound by default.
export-completions
Perform completion on the word before point as described above and write the list of possible
completions to readline's output stream using the following format, writing information on
separate lines:

• the number of matches N;
• the word being completed;
• S:E, where S and E are the start and end offsets of the word in the readline line
buffer; then
• each match, one per line

If there are no matches, the first line will be “0”, and this command does not print any out‐
put after the S:E. If there is only a single match, this prints a single line containing it.
If there is more than one match, this prints the common prefix of the matches, which may be
empty, on the first line after the S:E, then the matches on subsequent lines. In this case, N
will include the first line with the common prefix.

The user or application should be able to accommodate the possibility of a blank line. The
intent is that the user or application reads N lines after the line containing S:E to obtain
the match list. This command is unbound by default.

delete-char-or-list
Deletes the character under the cursor if not at the beginning or end of the line (like
delete-char). At the end of the line, it behaves identically to possible-completions. This
command is unbound by default.

complete-filename (M-/)
Attempt filename completion on the text before point.

possible-filename-completions (C-x /)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating it as a filename.

complete-username (M-~)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a username.

possible-username-completions (C-x ~)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating it as a username.

complete-variable (M-$)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a shell variable.

possible-variable-completions (C-x $)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating it as a shell variable.

complete-hostname (M-@)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a hostname.

possible-hostname-completions (C-x @)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating it as a hostname.

complete-command (M-!)
Attempt completion on the text before point, treating it as a command name. Command comple‐
tion attempts to match the text against aliases, reserved words, shell functions, shell
builtins, and finally executable filenames, in that order.

possible-command-completions (C-x !)
List the possible completions of the text before point, treating it as a command name.

dynamic-complete-history (M-TAB)
Attempt completion on the text before point, comparing the text against history list entries
for possible completion matches.

dabbrev-expand
Attempt menu completion on the text before point, comparing the text against lines from the
history list for possible completion matches.

complete-into-braces (M-{)
Perform filename completion and insert the list of possible completions enclosed within braces
so the list is available to the shell (see Brace Expansion above).

Keyboard Macros
start-kbd-macro (C-x ()
Begin saving the characters typed into the current keyboard macro.
end-kbd-macro (C-x ))
Stop saving the characters typed into the current keyboard macro and store the definition.
call-last-kbd-macro (C-x e)
Re-execute the last keyboard macro defined, by making the characters in the macro appear as if
typed at the keyboard.
print-last-kbd-macro ()
Print the last keyboard macro defined in a format suitable for the inputrc file.

Miscellaneous
re-read-init-file (C-x C-r)
Read in the contents of the inputrc file, and incorporate any bindings or variable assignments
found there.
abort (C-g)
Abort the current editing command and ring the terminal's bell (subject to the setting of
bell-style).
do-lowercase-version (M-A, M-B, M-x, ...)
If the metafied character x is uppercase, run the command that is bound to the corresponding
metafied lowercase character. The behavior is undefined if x is already lowercase.
prefix-meta (ESC)
Metafy the next character typed. ESC f is equivalent to Meta-f.
undo (C-_, C-x C-u)
Incremental undo, separately remembered for each line.
revert-line (M-r)
Undo all changes made to this line. This is like executing the undo command enough times to
return the line to its initial state.
tilde-expand (M-&)
Perform tilde expansion on the current word.
set-mark (C-@, M-)
Set the mark to the point. If a numeric argument is supplied, set the mark to that position.
exchange-point-and-mark (C-x C-x)
Swap the point with the mark. Set the current cursor position to the saved position, then set
the mark to the old cursor position.
character-search (C-])
Read a character and move point to the next occurrence of that character. A negative argument
searches for previous occurrences.
character-search-backward (M-C-])
Read a character and move point to the previous occurrence of that character. A negative ar‐
gument searches for subsequent occurrences.
skip-csi-sequence
Read enough characters to consume a multi-key sequence such as those defined for keys like
Home and End. CSI sequences begin with a Control Sequence Indicator (CSI), usually ESC [. If
this sequence is bound to “\e[”, keys producing CSI sequences have no effect unless explicitly
bound to a readline command, instead of inserting stray characters into the editing buffer.
This is unbound by default, but usually bound to ESC [.
insert-comment (M-#)
Without a numeric argument, insert the value of the readline comment-begin variable at the be‐
ginning of the current line. If a numeric argument is supplied, this command acts as a tog‐
gle: if the characters at the beginning of the line do not match the value of comment-begin,
insert the value; otherwise delete the characters in comment-begin from the beginning of the
line. In either case, the line is accepted as if a newline had been typed. The default value
of comment-begin causes this command to make the current line a shell comment. If a numeric
argument causes the comment character to be removed, the line will be executed by the shell.
spell-correct-word (C-x s)
Perform spelling correction on the current word, treating it as a directory or filename, in
the same way as the cdspell shell option. Word boundaries are the same as those used by
shell-forward-word.
glob-complete-word (M-g)
Treat the word before point as a pattern for pathname expansion, with an asterisk implicitly
appended, then use the pattern to generate a list of matching file names for possible comple‐
tions.
glob-expand-word (C-x *)
Treat the word before point as a pattern for pathname expansion, and insert the list of match‐
ing file names, replacing the word. If a numeric argument is supplied, append a * before
pathname expansion.
glob-list-expansions (C-x g)
Display the list of expansions that would have been generated by glob-expand-word and redis‐
play the line. If a numeric argument is supplied, append a * before pathname expansion.
dump-functions
Print all of the functions and their key bindings to the readline output stream. If a numeric
argument is supplied, the output is formatted in such a way that it can be made part of an in‐
putrc file.
dump-variables
Print all of the settable readline variables and their values to the readline output stream.
If a numeric argument is supplied, the output is formatted in such a way that it can be made
part of an inputrc file.
dump-macros
Print all of the readline key sequences bound to macros and the strings they output to the
readline output stream. If a numeric argument is supplied, the output is formatted in such a
way that it can be made part of an inputrc file.
execute-named-command (M-x)
Read a bindable readline command name from the input and execute the function to which it's
bound, as if the key sequence to which it was bound appeared in the input. If this function
is supplied with a numeric argument, it passes that argument to the function it executes.
display-shell-version (C-x C-v)
Display version information about the current instance of bash.

Programmable Completion
When a user attempts word completion for a command or an argument to a command for which a completion
specification (a compspec) has been defined using the complete builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS
below), readline invokes the programmable completion facilities.

First, bash identifies the command name. If a compspec has been defined for that command, the comp‐
spec is used to generate the list of possible completions for the word. If the command word is the
empty string (completion attempted at the beginning of an empty line), bash uses any compspec defined
with the -E option to complete. The -I option to complete indicates that the command word is the
first non-assignment word on the line, or after a command delimiter such as ; or |. This usually in‐
dicates command name completion.

If the command word is a full pathname, bash searches for a compspec for the full pathname first. If
there is no compspec for the full pathname, bash attempts to find a compspec for the portion follow‐
ing the final slash. If those searches do not result in a compspec, or if there is no compspec for
the command word, bash uses any compspec defined with the -D option to complete as the default. If
there is no default compspec, bash performs alias expansion on the command word as a final resort,
and attempts to find a compspec for the command word resulting from any successful expansion.

If a compspec is not found, bash performs its default completion as described above under Completing.
Otherwise, once a compspec has been found, bash uses it to generate the list of matching words.

First, bash performs the actions specified by the compspec. This only returns matches which are pre‐
fixes of the word being completed. When the -f or -d option is used for filename or directory name
completion, bash uses the shell variable FIGNORE to filter the matches.

Next, programmable completion generates matches specified by a pathname expansion pattern supplied as
an argument to the -G option. The words generated by the pattern need not match the word being com‐
pleted. Bash uses the FIGNORE variable to filter the matches, but does not use the GLOBIGNORE shell
variable.

Next, completion considers the string specified as the argument to the -W option. The string is
first split using the characters in the IFS special variable as delimiters. This honors shell quot‐
ing within the string, in order to provide a mechanism for the words to contain shell metacharacters
or characters in the value of IFS. Each word is then expanded using brace expansion, tilde expan‐
sion, parameter and variable expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion, as described
above under EXPANSION. The results are split using the rules described above under Word Splitting.
The results of the expansion are prefix-matched against the word being completed, and the matching
words become possible completions.

After these matches have been generated, bash executes any shell function or command specified with
the -F and -C options. When the command or function is invoked, bash assigns values to the
COMP_LINE, COMP_POINT, COMP_KEY, and COMP_TYPE variables as described above under Shell Variables.
If a shell function is being invoked, bash also sets the COMP_WORDS and COMP_CWORD variables. When
the function or command is invoked, the first argument ($1) is the name of the command whose argu‐
ments are being completed, the second argument ($2) is the word being completed, and the third argu‐
ment ($3) is the word preceding the word being completed on the current command line. There is no
filtering of the generated completions against the word being completed; the function or command has
complete freedom in generating the matches and they do not need to match a prefix of the word.

Any function specified with -F is invoked first. The function may use any of the shell facilities,
including the compgen and compopt builtins described below, to generate the matches. It must put the
possible completions in the COMPREPLY array variable, one per array element.

Next, any command specified with the -C option is invoked in an environment equivalent to command
substitution. It should print a list of completions, one per line, to the standard output. Back‐
slash will escape a newline, if necessary. These are added to the set of possible completions.

After generating all of the possible completions, bash applies any filter specified with the -X op‐
tion to the completions in the list. The filter is a pattern as used for pathname expansion; a & in
the pattern is replaced with the text of the word being completed. A literal & may be escaped with a
backslash; the backslash is removed before attempting a match. Any completion that matches the pat‐
tern is removed from the list. A leading ! negates the pattern; in this case bash removes any com‐
pletion that does not match the pattern. If the nocasematch shell option is enabled, bash performs
the match without regard to the case of alphabetic characters.

Finally, programmable completion adds any prefix and suffix specified with the -P and -S options, re‐
spectively, to each completion, and returns the result to readline as the list of possible comple‐
tions.

If the previously-applied actions do not generate any matches, and the -o dirnames option was sup‐
plied to complete when the compspec was defined, bash attempts directory name completion.

If the -o plusdirs option was supplied to complete when the compspec was defined, bash attempts di‐
rectory name completion and adds any matches to the set of possible completions.

By default, if a compspec is found, whatever it generates is returned to the completion code as the
full set of possible completions. The default bash completions and the readline default of filename
completion are disabled. If the -o bashdefault option was supplied to complete when the compspec was
defined, and the compspec generates no matches, bash attempts its default completions. If the comp‐
spec and, if attempted, the default bash completions generate no matches, and the -o default option
was supplied to complete when the compspec was defined, programmable completion performs readline's
default completion.

The options supplied to complete and compopt can control how readline treats the completions. For
instance, the -o fullquote option tells readline to quote the matches as if they were filenames. See
the description of complete below for details.

When a compspec indicates that it wants directory name completion, the programmable completion func‐
tions force readline to append a slash to completed names which are symbolic links to directories,
subject to the value of the mark-directories readline variable, regardless of the setting of the
mark-symlinked-directories readline variable.

There is some support for dynamically modifying completions. This is most useful when used in combi‐
nation with a default completion specified with complete -D. It's possible for shell functions exe‐
cuted as completion functions to indicate that completion should be retried by returning an exit sta‐
tus of 124. If a shell function returns 124, and changes the compspec associated with the command on
which completion is being attempted (supplied as the first argument when the function is executed),
programmable completion restarts from the beginning, with an attempt to find a new compspec for that
command. This can be used to build a set of completions dynamically as completion is attempted,
rather than loading them all at once.

For instance, assuming that there is a library of compspecs, each kept in a file corresponding to the
name of the command, the following default completion function would load completions dynamically:
_completion_loader()
{
. "/etc/bash_completion.d/$1.sh" >/dev/null 2>&1 && return 124
}
complete -D -F _completion_loader -o bashdefault -o default

HISTORY
When the -o history option to the set builtin is enabled, the shell provides access to the command
history, the list of commands previously typed. The value of the HISTSIZE variable is used as the
number of commands to save in a history list: the shell saves the text of the last HISTSIZE commands
(default 500). The shell stores each command in the history list prior to parameter and variable ex‐
pansion (see EXPANSION above) but after history expansion is performed, subject to the values of the
shell variables HISTIGNORE and HISTCONTROL.

On startup, bash initializes the history list by reading history entries from the file named by the
HISTFILE variable (default ~/.bash_history). That file is referred to as the history file. The his‐
tory file is truncated, if necessary, to contain no more than the number of history entries specified
by the value of the HISTFILESIZE variable. If HISTFILESIZE is unset, or set to null, a non-numeric
value, or a numeric value less than zero, the history file is not truncated.

When the history file is read, lines beginning with the history comment character followed immedi‐
ately by a digit are interpreted as timestamps for the following history line. These timestamps are
optionally displayed depending on the value of the HISTTIMEFORMAT variable. When present, history
timestamps delimit history entries, making multi-line entries possible.

When a shell with history enabled exits, bash copies the last $HISTSIZE entries from the history list
to $HISTFILE. If the histappend shell option is enabled (see the description of shopt under SHELL
BUILTIN COMMANDS below), bash appends the entries to the history file, otherwise it overwrites the
history file. If HISTFILE is unset or null, or if the history file is unwritable, the history is not
saved. After saving the history, bash truncates the history file to contain no more than HISTFILE‐
SIZE lines as described above.

If the HISTTIMEFORMAT variable is set, the shell writes the timestamp information associated with
each history entry to the history file, marked with the history comment character, so timestamps are
preserved across shell sessions. This uses the history comment character to distinguish timestamps
from other history lines. As above, when using HISTTIMEFORMAT, the timestamps delimit multi-line
history entries.

The fc builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) will list or edit and re-execute a portion
of the history list. The history builtin can display or modify the history list and manipulate the
history file. When using command-line editing, search commands are available in each editing mode
that provide access to the history list.

The shell allows control over which commands are saved on the history list. The HISTCONTROL and
HISTIGNORE variables are used to save only a subset of the commands entered. If the cmdhist shell
option is enabled, the shell attempts to save each line of a multi-line command in the same history
entry, adding semicolons where necessary to preserve syntactic correctness. The lithist shell option
modifies cmdhist by saving the command with embedded newlines instead of semicolons. See the de‐
scription of the shopt builtin below under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS for information on setting and un‐
setting shell options.

HISTORY EXPANSION
The shell supports a history expansion feature that is similar to the history expansion in csh. This
section describes what syntax features are available.

History expansion is enabled by default for interactive shells, and can be disabled using the +H op‐
tion to the set builtin command (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below). Non-interactive shells do not
perform history expansion by default, but it can be enabled with “set -H”.

History expansions introduce words from the history list into the input stream, making it easy to re‐
peat commands, insert the arguments to a previous command into the current input line, or fix errors
in previous commands quickly.

History expansion is performed immediately after a complete line is read, before the shell breaks it
into words, and is performed on each line individually. The shell attempts to inform the history ex‐
pansion functions about quoting still in effect from previous lines.

It takes place in two parts. The first is to determine which history list entry to use during sub‐
stitution. The second is to select portions of that entry to include into the current one.

The entry selected from the history is the event, and the portions of that entry that are acted upon
are words. Various modifiers are available to manipulate the selected words. The entry is split
into words in the same fashion as when reading input, so that several metacharacter-separated words
surrounded by quotes are considered one word. The event designator selects the event, the optional
word designator selects words from the event, and various optional modifiers are available to manipu‐
late the selected words.

History expansions are introduced by the appearance of the history expansion character, which is ! by
default. History expansions may appear anywhere in the input, but do not nest.

Only backslash (\) and single quotes can quote the history expansion character, but the history ex‐
pansion character is also treated as quoted if it immediately precedes the closing double quote in a
double-quoted string.

Several characters inhibit history expansion if found immediately following the history expansion
character, even if it is unquoted: space, tab, newline, carriage return, =, and the other shell
metacharacters defined above.

There is a special abbreviation for substitution, active when the quick substitution character (de‐
scribed above under histchars) is the first character on the line. It selects the previous history
list entry, using an event designator equivalent to !!, and substitutes one string for another in
that entry. It is described below under Event Designators. This is the only history expansion that
does not begin with the history expansion character.

Several shell options settable with the shopt builtin will modify history expansion behavior (see the
description of the shopt builtin below).and If the histverify shell option is enabled, and readline
is being used, history substitutions are not immediately passed to the shell parser. Instead, the
expanded line is reloaded into the readline editing buffer for further modification. If readline is
being used, and the histreedit shell option is enabled, a failed history substitution is reloaded
into the readline editing buffer for correction.

The -p option to the history builtin command shows what a history expansion will do before using it.
The -s option to the history builtin will add commands to the end of the history list without actu‐
ally executing them, so that they are available for subsequent recall.

The shell allows control of the various characters used by the history expansion mechanism (see the
description of histchars above under Shell Variables). The shell uses the history comment character
to mark history timestamps when writing the history file.

Event Designators
An event designator is a reference to an entry in the history list. The event designator consists of
the portion of the word beginning with the history expansion character and ending with the word des‐
ignator if present, or the end of the word. Unless the reference is absolute, events are relative to
the current position in the history list.

! Start a history substitution, except when followed by a blank, newline, carriage return, =,
or, when the extglob shell option is enabled using the shopt builtin, (.
!n Refer to history list entry n.
!-n Refer to the current entry minus n.
!! Refer to the previous entry. This is a synonym for “!-1”.
!string
Refer to the most recent command preceding the current position in the history list starting
with string.
!?string[?]
Refer to the most recent command preceding the current position in the history list containing
string. The trailing ? may be omitted if string is followed immediately by a newline. If
string is missing, this uses the string from the most recent search; it is an error if there
is no previous search string.
^string1^string2^
Quick substitution. Repeat the previous command, replacing string1 with string2. Equivalent
to “!!:s^string1^string2^” (see Modifiers below).
!# The entire command line typed so far.

Word Designators
Word designators are used to select desired words from the event. They are optional; if the word
designator isn't supplied, the history expansion uses the entire event. A : separates the event
specification from the word designator. It may be omitted if the word designator begins with a ^, $,
*, -, or %. Words are numbered from the beginning of the line, with the first word being denoted by
0 (zero). Words are inserted into the current line separated by single spaces.

0 (zero)
The zeroth word. For the shell, this is the command word.
n The nth word.
^ The first argument: word 1.
$ The last word. This is usually the last argument, but will expand to the zeroth word if there
is only one word in the line.
% The first word matched by the most recent “?string?” search, if the search string begins with
a character that is part of a word. By default, searches begin at the end of each line and
proceed to the beginning, so the first word matched is the one closest to the end of the line.
x-y A range of words; “-y” abbreviates “0-y”.
* All of the words but the zeroth. This is a synonym for “1-$”. It is not an error to use * if
there is just one word in the event; it expands to the empty string in that case.
x* Abbreviates x-$.
x- Abbreviates x-$ like x*, but omits the last word. If x is missing, it defaults to 0.

If a word designator is supplied without an event specification, the previous command is used as the
event, equivalent to !!.

Modifiers
After the optional word designator, the expansion may include a sequence of one or more of the fol‐
lowing modifiers, each preceded by a “:”. These modify, or edit, the word or words selected from the
history event.

h Remove a trailing pathname component, leaving only the head.
t Remove all leading pathname components, leaving the tail.
r Remove a trailing suffix of the form .xxx, leaving the basename.
e Remove all but the trailing suffix.
p Print the new command but do not execute it.
q Quote the substituted words, escaping further substitutions.
x Quote the substituted words as with q, but break into words at blanks and newlines. The q and
x modifiers are mutually exclusive; expansion uses the last one supplied.
s/old/new/
Substitute new for the first occurrence of old in the event line. Any character may be used
as the delimiter in place of /. The final delimiter is optional if it is the last character
of the event line. A single backslash quotes the delimiter in old and new. If & appears in
new, it is replaced with old. A single backslash quotes the &. If old is null, it is set to
the last old substituted, or, if no previous history substitutions took place, the last string
in a !?string[?] search. If new is null, each matching old is deleted.
& Repeat the previous substitution.
g Cause changes to be applied over the entire event line. This is used in conjunction with “:s”
(e.g., “:gs/old/new/”) or “:&”. If used with “:s”, any delimiter can be used in place of /,
and the final delimiter is optional if it is the last character of the event line. An a may
be used as a synonym for g.
G Apply the following “s” or “&” modifier once to each word in the event line.

SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS
Unless otherwise noted, each builtin command documented in this section as accepting options preceded
by - accepts -- to signify the end of the options. The :, true, false, and test/[ builtins do not
accept options and do not treat -- specially. The exit, logout, return, break, continue, let, and
shift builtins accept and process arguments beginning with - without requiring --. Other builtins
that accept arguments but are not specified as accepting options interpret arguments beginning with -
as invalid options and require -- to prevent this interpretation.

: [arguments]
No effect; the command does nothing beyond expanding arguments and performing any specified
redirections. The return status is zero.

. [-p path] filename [arguments]
source [-p path] filename [arguments]
The . command (source) reads and execute commands from filename in the current shell environ‐
ment and returns the exit status of the last command executed from filename.

If filename does not contain a slash, . searches for it. If the -p option is supplied, .
treats path as a colon-separated list of directories in which to find filename; otherwise, .
uses the entries in PATH to find the directory containing filename. filename does not need to
be executable. When bash is not in posix mode, it searches the current directory if filename
is not found in PATH, but does not search the current directory if -p is supplied. If the
sourcepath option to the shopt builtin command is turned off, . does not search PATH.

If any arguments are supplied, they become the positional parameters when filename is exe‐
cuted. Otherwise the positional parameters are unchanged.

If the -T option is enabled, . inherits any trap on DEBUG; if it is not, any DEBUG trap string
is saved and restored around the call to ., and . unsets the DEBUG trap while it executes. If
-T is not set, and the sourced file changes the DEBUG trap, the new value persists after .
completes. The return status is the status of the last command executed from filename (0 if
no commands are executed), and non-zero if filename is not found or cannot be read.

alias [-p] [name[=value] ...]
With no arguments or with the -p option, alias prints the list of aliases in the form alias
name=value on standard output. When arguments are supplied, define an alias for each name
whose value is given. A trailing space in value causes the next word to be checked for alias
substitution when the alias is expanded during command parsing. For each name in the argument
list for which no value is supplied, print the name and value of the alias name. alias re‐
turns true unless a name is given (without a corresponding =value) for which no alias has been
defined.

bg [jobspec ...]
Resume each suspended job jobspec in the background, as if it had been started with &. If
jobspec is not present, the shell uses its notion of the current job. bg jobspec returns 0
unless run when job control is disabled or, when run with job control enabled, any specified
jobspec was not found or was started without job control.

bind [-m keymap] [-lsvSVX]
bind [-m keymap] [-q function] [-u function] [-r keyseq]
bind [-m keymap] -f filename
bind [-m keymap] -x keyseq[:] shell-command
bind [-m keymap] keyseq:function-name
bind [-m keymap] -p|-P [readline-command]
bind [-m keymap] keyseq:readline-command
bind readline-command-line
Display current readline key and function bindings, bind a key sequence to a readline function
or macro or to a shell command, or set a readline variable. Each non-option argument is a key
binding or command as it would appear in a readline initialization file such as .inputrc, but
each binding or command must be passed as a separate argument; e.g., '"\C-x\C-r":
re-read-init-file'. In the following descriptions, output available to be re-read is format‐
ted as commands that would appear in a readline initialization file or that would be supplied
as individual arguments to a bind command. Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:
-m keymap
Use keymap as the keymap to be affected by the subsequent bindings. Acceptable keymap
names are emacs, emacs-standard, emacs-meta, emacs-ctlx, vi, vi-move, vi-command, and
vi-insert. vi is equivalent to vi-command (vi-move is also a synonym); emacs is equiv‐
alent to emacs-standard.
-l List the names of all readline functions.
-p Display readline function names and bindings in such a way that they can be used as an
argument to a subsequent bind command or in a readline initialization file. If argu‐
ments remain after option processing, bind treats them as readline command names and
restricts output to those names.
-P List current readline function names and bindings. If arguments remain after option
processing, bind treats them as readline command names and restricts output to those
names.
-s Display readline key sequences bound to macros and the strings they output in such a
way that they can be used as an argument to a subsequent bind command or in a readline
initialization file.
-S Display readline key sequences bound to macros and the strings they output.
-v Display readline variable names and values in such a way that they can be used as an
argument to a subsequent bind command or in a readline initialization file.
-V List current readline variable names and values.
-f filename
Read key bindings from filename.
-q function
Display key sequences that invoke the named readline function.
-u function
Unbind all key sequences bound to the named readline function.
-r keyseq
Remove any current binding for keyseq.
-x keyseq[: ]shell-command
Cause shell-command to be executed whenever keyseq is entered. The separator between
keyseq and shell-command is either whitespace or a colon optionally followed by white‐
space. If the separator is whitespace, shell-command must be enclosed in double quotes
and readline expands any of its special backslash-escapes in shell-command before sav‐
ing it. If the separator is a colon, any enclosing double quotes are optional, and
readline does not expand the command string before saving it. Since the entire key
binding expression must be a single argument, it should be enclosed in single quotes.
When shell-command is executed, the shell sets the READLINE_LINE variable to the con‐
tents of the readline line buffer and the READLINE_POINT and READLINE_MARK variables to
the current location of the insertion point and the saved insertion point (the mark),
respectively. The shell assigns any numeric argument the user supplied to the READ‐
LINE_ARGUMENT variable. If there was no argument, that variable is not set. If the
executed command changes the value of any of READLINE_LINE, READLINE_POINT, or READ‐
LINE_MARK, those new values will be reflected in the editing state.
-X List all key sequences bound to shell commands and the associated commands in a format
that can be reused as an argument to a subsequent bind command.

The return value is 0 unless an unrecognized option is supplied or an error occurred.

break [n]
Exit from within a for, while, until, or select loop. If n is specified, break exits n en‐
closing loops. n must be ≥ 1. If n is greater than the number of enclosing loops, all en‐
closing loops are exited. The return value is 0 unless n is not greater than or equal to 1.

builtin shell-builtin [arguments]
Execute the specified shell builtin shell-builtin, passing it arguments, and return its exit
status. This is useful when defining a function whose name is the same as a shell builtin,
retaining the functionality of the builtin within the function. The cd builtin is commonly
redefined this way. The return status is false if shell-builtin is not a shell builtin com‐
mand.

caller [expr]
Returns the context of any active subroutine call (a shell function or a script executed with
the . or source builtins).

Without expr, caller displays the line number and source filename of the current subroutine
call. If a non-negative integer is supplied as expr, caller displays the line number, subrou‐
tine name, and source file corresponding to that position in the current execution call stack.
This extra information may be used, for example, to print a stack trace. The current frame is
frame 0.

The return value is 0 unless the shell is not executing a subroutine call or expr does not
correspond to a valid position in the call stack.

cd [-L] [-@] [dir]
cd -P [-e] [-@] [dir]
Change the current directory to dir. if dir is not supplied, the value of the HOME shell
variable is used as dir. The variable CDPATH exists, and dir does not begin with a slash (/),
cd uses it as a search path: the shell searches each directory name in CDPATH for dir. Alter‐
native directory names in CDPATH are separated by a colon (:). A null directory name in CD‐
PATH is the same as the current directory, i.e., “.”.

The -P option causes cd to use the physical directory structure by resolving symbolic links
while traversing dir and before processing instances of .. in dir (see also the -P option to
the set builtin command).

The -L option forces cd to follow symbolic links by resolving the link after processing in‐
stances of .. in dir. If .. appears in dir, cd processes it by removing the immediately pre‐
vious pathname component from dir, back to a slash or the beginning of dir, and verifying that
the portion of dir it has processed to that point is still a valid directory name after remov‐
ing the pathname component. If it is not a valid directory name, cd returns a non-zero sta‐
tus. If neither -L nor -P is supplied, cd behaves as if -L had been supplied.

If the -e option is supplied with -P, and cd cannot successfully determine the current working
directory after a successful directory change, it returns a non-zero status.

On systems that support it, the -@ option presents the extended attributes associated with a
file as a directory.

An argument of - is converted to $OLDPWD before attempting the directory change.

If cd uses a non-empty directory name from CDPATH, or if - is the first argument, and the di‐
rectory change is successful, cd writes the absolute pathname of the new working directory to
the standard output.

If the directory change is successful, cd sets the value of the PWD environment variable to
the new directory name, and sets the OLDPWD environment variable to the value of the current
working directory before the change.

The return value is true if the directory was successfully changed; false otherwise.

command [-pVv] command [arg ...]
The command builtin runs command with args suppressing the normal shell function lookup for
command. Only builtin commands or commands found in the PATH named command are executed. If
the -p option is supplied, the search for command is performed using a default value for PATH
that is guaranteed to find all of the standard utilities.

If either the -V or -v option is supplied, command prints a description of command. The -v
option displays a single word indicating the command or filename used to invoke command; the
-V option produces a more verbose description.

If the -V or -v option is supplied, the exit status is zero if command was found, and non-zero
if not. If neither option is supplied and an error occurred or command cannot be found, the
exit status is 127. Otherwise, the exit status of the command builtin is the exit status of
command.

compgen [-V varname] [option] [word]
Generate possible completion matches for word according to the options, which may be any op‐
tion accepted by the complete builtin with the exceptions of -p, -r, -D, -E, and -I, and write
the matches to the standard output.

If the -V option is supplied, compgen stores the generated completions into the indexed array
variable varname instead of writing them to the standard output.

When using the -F or -C options, the various shell variables set by the programmable comple‐
tion facilities, while available, will not have useful values.

The matches will be generated in the same way as if the programmable completion code had gen‐
erated them directly from a completion specification with the same flags. If word is speci‐
fied, only those completions matching word will be displayed or stored.

The return value is true unless an invalid option is supplied, or no matches were generated.

complete [-abcdefgjksuv] [-o comp-option] [-DEI] [-A action]
[-G globpat] [-W wordlist] [-F function] [-C command]
[-X filterpat] [-P prefix] [-S suffix] name [name ...]
complete -pr [-DEI] [name ...]
Specify how arguments to each name should be completed.

If the -p option is supplied, or if no options or names are supplied, print existing comple‐
tion specifications in a way that allows them to be reused as input. The -r option removes a
completion specification for each name, or, if no names are supplied, all completion specifi‐
cations.

The -D option indicates that other supplied options and actions should apply to the “default”
command completion; that is, completion attempted on a command for which no completion has
previously been defined. The -E option indicates that other supplied options and actions
should apply to “empty” command completion; that is, completion attempted on a blank line.
The -I option indicates that other supplied options and actions should apply to completion on
the initial non-assignment word on the line, or after a command delimiter such as ; or |,
which is usually command name completion. If multiple options are supplied, the -D option
takes precedence over -E, and both take precedence over -I. If any of -D, -E, or -I are sup‐
plied, any other name arguments are ignored; these completions only apply to the case speci‐
fied by the option.

The process of applying these completion specifications when attempting word completion is
described above under Programmable Completion.

Other options, if specified, have the following meanings. The arguments to the -G, -W, and -X
options (and, if necessary, the -P and -S options) should be quoted to protect them from ex‐
pansion before the complete builtin is invoked.

-o comp-option
The comp-option controls several aspects of the compspec's behavior beyond the simple
generation of completions. comp-option may be one of:
bashdefault
Perform the rest of the default bash completions if the compspec generates no
matches.
default Use readline's default filename completion if the compspec generates no
matches.
dirnames
Perform directory name completion if the compspec generates no matches.
filenames
Tell readline that the compspec generates filenames, so it can perform any
filename-specific processing (such as adding a slash to directory names, quot‐
ing special characters, or suppressing trailing spaces). This is intended to
be used with shell functions.
fullquote
Tell readline to quote all the completed words even if they are not filenames.
noquote Tell readline not to quote the completed words if they are filenames (quoting
filenames is the default).
nosort Tell readline not to sort the list of possible completions alphabetically.
nospace Tell readline not to append a space (the default) to words completed at the
end of the line.
plusdirs
After generating any matches defined by the compspec, attempt directory name
completion and add any matches to the results of the other actions.
-A action
The action may be one of the following to generate a list of possible completions:
alias Alias names. May also be specified as -a.
arrayvar
Array variable names.
binding Readline key binding names.
builtin Names of shell builtin commands. May also be specified as -b.
command Command names. May also be specified as -c.
directory
Directory names. May also be specified as -d.
disabled
Names of disabled shell builtins.
enabled Names of enabled shell builtins.
export Names of exported shell variables. May also be specified as -e.
file File and directory names, similar to readline's filename completion. May also
be specified as -f.
function
Names of shell functions.
group Group names. May also be specified as -g.
helptopic
Help topics as accepted by the help builtin.
hostname
Hostnames, as taken from the file specified by the HOSTFILE shell variable.
job Job names, if job control is active. May also be specified as -j.
keyword Shell reserved words. May also be specified as -k.
running Names of running jobs, if job control is active.
service Service names. May also be specified as -s.
setopt Valid arguments for the -o option to the set builtin.
shopt Shell option names as accepted by the shopt builtin.
signal Signal names.
stopped Names of stopped jobs, if job control is active.
user User names. May also be specified as -u.
variable
Names of all shell variables. May also be specified as -v.
-C command
command is executed in a subshell environment, and its output is used as the possible
completions. Arguments are passed as with the -F option.
-F function
The shell function function is executed in the current shell environment. When the
function is executed, the first argument ($1) is the name of the command whose argu‐
ments are being completed, the second argument ($2) is the word being completed, and
the third argument ($3) is the word preceding the word being completed on the current
command line. When function finishes, programmable completion retrieves the possible
completions from the value of the COMPREPLY array variable.
-G globpat
Expand the pathname expansion pattern globpat to generate the possible completions.
-P prefix
Add prefix to the beginning of each possible completion after all other options have
been applied.
-S suffix
Append suffix to each possible completion after all other options have been applied.
-W wordlist
Split the wordlist using the characters in the IFS special variable as delimiters, and
expand each resulting word. Shell quoting is honored within wordlist, in order to
provide a mechanism for the words to contain shell metacharacters or characters in the
value of IFS. The possible completions are the members of the resultant list which
match a prefix of the word being completed.
-X filterpat
filterpat is a pattern as used for pathname expansion. It is applied to the list of
possible completions generated by the preceding options and arguments, and each com‐
pletion matching filterpat is removed from the list. A leading ! in filterpat negates
the pattern; in this case, any completion not matching filterpat is removed.

The return value is true unless an invalid option is supplied, an option other than -p, -r,
-D, -E, or -I is supplied without a name argument, an attempt is made to remove a completion
specification for a name for which no specification exists, or an error occurs adding a com‐
pletion specification.

compopt [-o option] [-DEI] [+o option] [name]
Modify completion options for each name according to the options, or for the currently-execut‐
ing completion if no names are supplied. If no options are supplied, display the completion
options for each name or the current completion. The possible values of option are those
valid for the complete builtin described above.

The -D option indicates that other supplied options should apply to the “default” command com‐
pletion; the -E option indicates that other supplied options should apply to “empty” command
completion; and the -I option indicates that other supplied options should apply to completion
on the initial word on the line. These are determined in the same way as the complete
builtin.

If multiple options are supplied, the -D option takes precedence over -E, and both take prece‐
dence over -I.

The return value is true unless an invalid option is supplied, an attempt is made to modify
the options for a name for which no completion specification exists, or an output error oc‐
curs.

continue [n]
continue resumes the next iteration of the enclosing for, while, until, or select loop. If n
is specified, bash resumes the nth enclosing loop. n must be ≥ 1. If n is greater than the
number of enclosing loops, the shell resumes the last enclosing loop (the “top-level” loop).
The return value is 0 unless n is not greater than or equal to 1.

declare [-aAfFgiIlnrtux] [-p] [name[=value] ...]
typeset [-aAfFgiIlnrtux] [-p] [name[=value] ...]
Declare variables and/or give them attributes. If no names are given then display the values
of variables or functions. The -p option will display the attributes and values of each name.
When -p is used with name arguments, additional options, other than -f and -F, are ignored.

When -p is supplied without name arguments, declare will display the attributes and values of
all variables having the attributes specified by the additional options. If no other options
are supplied with -p, declare will display the attributes and values of all shell variables.
The -f option restricts the display to shell functions.

The -F option inhibits the display of function definitions; only the function name and attrib‐
utes are printed. If the extdebug shell option is enabled using shopt, the source file name
and line number where each name is defined are displayed as well. The -F option implies -f.

The -g option forces variables to be created or modified at the global scope, even when de‐
clare is executed in a shell function. It is ignored when declare is not executed in a shell
function.

The -I option causes local variables to inherit the attributes (except the nameref attribute)
and value of any existing variable with the same name at a surrounding scope. If there is no
existing variable, the local variable is initially unset.

The following options can be used to restrict output to variables with the specified attribute
or to give variables attributes:
-a Each name is an indexed array variable (see Arrays above).
-A Each name is an associative array variable (see Arrays above).
-f Each name refers to a shell function.
-i The variable is treated as an integer; arithmetic evaluation (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION
above) is performed when the variable is assigned a value.
-l When the variable is assigned a value, all upper-case characters are converted to
lower-case. The upper-case attribute is disabled.
-n Give each name the nameref attribute, making it a name reference to another variable.
That other variable is defined by the value of name. All references, assignments, and
attribute modifications to name, except those using or changing the -n attribute it‐
self, are performed on the variable referenced by name's value. The nameref attribute
cannot be applied to array variables.
-r Make names readonly. These names cannot then be assigned values by subsequent assign‐
ment statements or unset.
-t Give each name the trace attribute. Traced functions inherit the DEBUG and RETURN
traps from the calling shell. The trace attribute has no special meaning for vari‐
ables.
-u When the variable is assigned a value, all lower-case characters are converted to up‐
per-case. The lower-case attribute is disabled.
-x Mark each name for export to subsequent commands via the environment.

Using “+” instead of “-” turns off the specified attribute instead, with the exceptions that
+a and +A may not be used to destroy array variables and +r will not remove the readonly at‐
tribute.

When used in a function, declare and typeset make each name local, as with the local command,
unless the -g option is supplied. If a variable name is followed by =value, the value of the
variable is set to value. When using -a or -A and the compound assignment syntax to create
array variables, additional attributes do not take effect until subsequent assignments.

The return value is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered, an attempt is made to define a
function using “-f foo=bar”, an attempt is made to assign a value to a readonly variable, an
attempt is made to assign a value to an array variable without using the compound assignment
syntax (see Arrays above), one of the names is not a valid shell variable name, an attempt is
made to turn off readonly status for a readonly variable, an attempt is made to turn off array
status for an array variable, or an attempt is made to display a non-existent function with
-f.

dirs [-clpv] [+n] [-n]
Without options, display the list of currently remembered directories. The default display is
on a single line with directory names separated by spaces. Directories are added to the list
with the pushd command; the popd command removes entries from the list. The current directory
is always the first directory in the stack.

Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:
-c Clears the directory stack by deleting all of the entries.
-l Produces a listing using full pathnames; the default listing format uses a tilde to de‐
note the home directory.
-p Print the directory stack with one entry per line.
-v Print the directory stack with one entry per line, prefixing each entry with its index
in the stack.
+n Displays the nth entry counting from the left of the list shown by dirs when invoked
without options, starting with zero.
-n Displays the nth entry counting from the right of the list shown by dirs when invoked
without options, starting with zero.

The return value is 0 unless an invalid option is supplied or n indexes beyond the end of the
directory stack.

disown [-ar] [-h] [id ...]
Without options, remove each id from the table of active jobs. Each id may be a job specifi‐
cation jobspec or a process ID pid; if id is a pid, disown uses the job containing pid as job‐
spec.

If the -h option is supplied, disown does not remove the jobs corresponding to each id from
the jobs table, but rather marks them so the shell does not send SIGHUP to the job if the
shell receives a SIGHUP.

If no id is supplied, the -a option means to remove or mark all jobs; the -r option without an
id argument removes or marks running jobs. If no id is supplied, and neither the -a nor the
-r option is supplied, disown removes or marks the current job.

The return value is 0 unless an id does not specify a valid job.

echo [-neE] [arg ...]
Output the args, separated by spaces, followed by a newline. The return status is 0 unless a
write error occurs. If -n is specified, the trailing newline is not printed.

If the -e option is given, echo interprets the following backslash-escaped characters. The -E
option disables interpretation of these escape characters, even on systems where they are in‐
terpreted by default. The xpg_echo shell option determines whether or not echo interprets any
options and expands these escape characters. echo does not interpret -- to mean the end of
options.

echo interprets the following escape sequences:
\a alert (bell)
\b backspace
\c suppress further output
\e
\E an escape character
\f form feed
\n new line
\r carriage return
\t horizontal tab
\v vertical tab
\\ backslash
\0nnn The eight-bit character whose value is the octal value nnn (zero to three octal dig‐
its).
\xHH The eight-bit character whose value is the hexadecimal value HH (one or two hex dig‐
its).
\uHHHH The Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the hexadecimal value HHHH (one to
four hex digits).
\UHHHHHHHH
The Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) character whose value is the hexadecimal value HHHHHHHH
(one to eight hex digits).

echo writes any unrecognized backslash-escaped characters unchanged.

enable [-a] [-dnps] [-f filename] [name ...]
Enable and disable builtin shell commands. Disabling a builtin allows an executable file
which has the same name as a shell builtin to be executed without specifying a full pathname,
even though the shell normally searches for builtins before files.

If -n is supplied, each name is disabled; otherwise, names are enabled. For example, to use
the test binary found using PATH instead of the shell builtin version, run “enable -n test”.

If no name arguments are supplied, or if the -p option is supplied, print a list of shell
builtins. With no other option arguments, the list consists of all enabled shell builtins.
If -n is supplied, print only disabled builtins. If -a is supplied, the list printed includes
all builtins, with an indication of whether or not each is enabled. The -s option means to
restrict the output to the POSIX special builtins.

The -f option means to load the new builtin command name from shared object filename, on sys‐
tems that support dynamic loading. If filename does not contain a slash, Bash will use the
value of the BASH_LOADABLES_PATH variable as a colon-separated list of directories in which to
search for filename. The default for BASH_LOADABLES_PATH is system-dependent, and may include
“.” to force a search of the current directory. The -d option will delete a builtin previ‐
ously loaded with -f. If -s is used with -f, the new builtin becomes a POSIX special builtin.

If no options are supplied and a name is not a shell builtin, enable will attempt to load name
from a shared object named name, as if the command were “enable -f name name”.

The return value is 0 unless a name is not a shell builtin or there is an error loading a new
builtin from a shared object.

eval [arg ...]
Concatenate the args together into a single command, separating them with spaces. Bash then
reads and execute this command, and returns its exit status as the return status of eval. If
there are no args, or only null arguments, eval returns 0.

exec [-cl] [-a name] [command [arguments]]
If command is specified, it replaces the shell without creating a new process. command cannot
be a shell builtin or function. The arguments become the arguments to command. If the -l op‐
tion is supplied, the shell places a dash at the beginning of the zeroth argument passed to
command. This is what login(1) does. The -c option causes command to be executed with an
empty environment. If -a is supplied, the shell passes name as the zeroth argument to the ex‐
ecuted command.

If command cannot be executed for some reason, a non-interactive shell exits, unless the exec‐
fail shell option is enabled. In that case, it returns a non-zero status. An interactive
shell returns a non-zero status if the file cannot be executed. A subshell exits uncondition‐
ally if exec fails.

If command is not specified, any redirections take effect in the current shell, and the return
status is 0. If there is a redirection error, the return status is 1.

exit [n]
Cause the shell to exit with a status of n. If n is omitted, the exit status is that of the
last command executed. Any trap on EXIT is executed before the shell terminates.

export [-fn] [name[=value]] ...
export -p [-f]
The supplied names are marked for automatic export to the environment of subsequently executed
commands. If the -f option is given, the names refer to functions.

The -n option unexports, or removes the export attribute, from each name. If no names are
given, or if only the -p option is supplied, export displays a list of names of all exported
variables on the standard output. Using -p and -f together displays exported functions. The
-p option displays output in a form that may be reused as input.

export allows the value of a variable to be set when it is exported or unexported by following
the variable name with =value. This sets the value of the variable to value while modifying
the export attribute. export returns an exit status of 0 unless an invalid option is encoun‐
tered, one of the names is not a valid shell variable name, or -f is supplied with a name that
is not a function.

false Does nothing; returns a non-zero status.

fc [-e ename] [-lnr] [first] [last]
fc -s [pat=rep] [cmd]
The first form selects a range of commands from first to last from the history list and dis‐
plays or edits and re-executes them. First and last may be specified as a string (to locate
the last command beginning with that string) or as a number (an index into the history list,
where a negative number is used as an offset from the current command number).

When listing, a first or last of 0 is equivalent to -1 and -0 is equivalent to the current
command (usually the fc command); otherwise 0 is equivalent to -1 and -0 is invalid. If last
is not specified, it is set to the current command for listing (so that “fc -l -10” prints the
last 10 commands) and to first otherwise. If first is not specified, it is set to the previ‐
ous command for editing and -16 for listing.

If the -l option is supplied, the commands are listed on the standard output. The -n option
suppresses the command numbers when listing. The -r option reverses the order of the com‐
mands.

Otherwise, fc invokes the editor named by ename on a file containing those commands. If ename
is not supplied, fc uses the value of the FCEDIT variable, and the value of EDITOR if FCEDIT
is not set. If neither variable is set, fc uses vi. When editing is complete, fc reads the
file containing the edited commands and echoes and executes them.

In the second form, fc re-executes command after replacing each instance of pat with rep.
Command is interpreted the same as first above.

A useful alias to use with fc is “r="fc -s"”, so that typing “r cc” runs the last command be‐
ginning with “cc” and typing “r” re-executes the last command.

If the first form is used, the return value is zero unless an invalid option is encountered or
first or last specify history lines out of range. When editing and re-executing a file of
commands, the return value is the value of the last command executed or failure if an error
occurs with the temporary file. If the second form is used, the return status is that of the
re-executed command, unless cmd does not specify a valid history entry, in which case fc re‐
turns a non-zero status.

fg [jobspec]
Resume jobspec in the foreground, and make it the current job. If jobspec is not present, fg
uses the shell's notion of the current job. The return value is that of the command placed
into the foreground, or failure if run when job control is disabled or, when run with job con‐
trol enabled, if jobspec does not specify a valid job or jobspec specifies a job that was
started without job control.

getopts optstring name [arg ...]
getopts is used by shell scripts and functions to parse positional parameters and obtain op‐
tions and their arguments. optstring contains the option characters to be recognized; if a
character is followed by a colon, the option is expected to have an argument, which should be
separated from it by white space. The colon and question mark characters may not be used as
option characters.

Each time it is invoked, getopts places the next option in the shell variable name, initializ‐
ing name if it does not exist, and the index of the next argument to be processed into the
variable OPTIND. OPTIND is initialized to 1 each time the shell or a shell script is invoked.
When an option requires an argument, getopts places that argument into the variable OPTARG.

The shell does not reset OPTIND automatically; it must be manually reset between multiple
calls to getopts within the same shell invocation to use a new set of parameters.

When it reaches the end of options, getopts exits with a return value greater than zero.
OPTIND is set to the index of the first non-option argument, and name is set to ?.

getopts normally parses the positional parameters, but if more arguments are supplied as arg
values, getopts parses those instead.

getopts can report errors in two ways. If the first character of optstring is a colon,
getopts uses silent error reporting. In normal operation, getopts prints diagnostic messages
when it encounters invalid options or missing option arguments. If the variable OPTERR is set
to 0, getopts does not display any error messages, even if the first character of optstring is
not a colon.

If getopts detects an invalid option, it places ? into name and, if not silent, prints an er‐
ror message and unsets OPTARG. If getopts is silent, it assigns the option character found to
OPTARG and does not print a diagnostic message.

If a required argument is not found, and getopts is not silent, it sets the value of name to a
question mark (?), unsets OPTARG, and prints a diagnostic message. If getopts is silent, it
sets the value of name to a colon (:) and sets OPTARG to the option character found.

getopts returns true if an option, specified or unspecified, is found. It returns false if
the end of options is encountered or an error occurs.

hash [-lr] [-p filename] [-dt] [name]
Each time hash is invoked, it remembers the full pathname of the command name as determined by
searching the directories in $PATH. Any previously-remembered pathname associated with name
is discarded. If the -p option is supplied, hash uses filename as the full pathname of the
command.

The -r option causes the shell to forget all remembered locations. Assigning to the PATH
variable also clears all hashed filenames. The -d option causes the shell to forget the re‐
membered location of each name.

If the -t option is supplied, hash prints the full pathname corresponding to each name. If
multiple name arguments are supplied with -t, hash prints the name before the corresponding
hashed full pathname. The -l option displays output in a format that may be reused as input.

If no arguments are given, or if only -l is supplied, hash prints information about remembered
commands. The -t, -d, and -p options (the options that act on the name arguments) are mutu‐
ally exclusive. Only one will be active. If more than one is supplied, -t has higher prior‐
ity than -p, and both have higher priority than -d.

The return status is zero unless a name is not found or an invalid option is supplied.

help [-dms] [pattern]
Display helpful information about builtin commands. If pattern is specified, help gives de‐
tailed help on all commands matching pattern as described below; otherwise it displays a list
of all the builtins and shell compound commands.

Options, if supplied, have the follow meanings:

-d Display a short description of each pattern
-m Display the description of each pattern in a manpage-like format
-s Display only a short usage synopsis for each pattern

If pattern contains pattern matching characters (see Pattern Matching above) it's treated as a
shell pattern and help prints the description of each help topic matching pattern.

If not, and pattern exactly matches the name of a help topic, help prints the description as‐
sociated with that topic. Otherwise, help performs prefix matching and prints the descrip‐
tions of all matching help topics.

The return status is 0 unless no command matches pattern.

history [n]
history -c
history -d offset
history -d start-end
history -anrw [filename]
history -p arg [arg ...]
history -s arg [arg ...]
With no options, display the command history list with numbers. Entries prefixed with a *
have been modified. An argument of n lists only the last n entries. If the shell variable
HISTTIMEFORMAT is set and not null, it is used as a format string for strftime(3) to display
the time stamp associated with each displayed history entry. If history uses HISTTIMEFORMAT,
it does not print an intervening space between the formatted time stamp and the history entry.

If filename is supplied, history uses it as the name of the history file; if not, it uses the
value of HISTFILE. If filename is not supplied and HISTFILE is unset or null, the -a, -n, -r,
and -w options have no effect.

Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:
-c Clear the history list by deleting all the entries. This can be used with the other
options to replace the history list.
-d offset
Delete the history entry at position offset. If offset is negative, it is interpreted
as relative to one greater than the last history position, so negative indices count
back from the end of the history, and an index of -1 refers to the current history -d
command.
-d start-end
Delete the range of history entries between positions start and end, inclusive. Posi‐
tive and negative values for start and end are interpreted as described above.
-a Append the “new” history lines to the history file. These are history lines entered
since the beginning of the current bash session, but not already appended to the his‐
tory file.
-n Read the history lines not already read from the history file and add them to the cur‐
rent history list. These are lines appended to the history file since the beginning of
the current bash session.
-r Read the history file and append its contents to the current history list.
-w Write the current history list to the history file, overwriting the history file.
-p Perform history substitution on the following args and display the result on the stan‐
dard output, without storing the results in the history list. Each arg must be quoted
to disable normal history expansion.
-s Store the args in the history list as a single entry. The last command in the history
list is removed before adding the args.

If the HISTTIMEFORMAT variable is set, history writes the time stamp information associated
with each history entry to the history file, marked with the history comment character as de‐
scribed above. When the history file is read, lines beginning with the history comment char‐
acter followed immediately by a digit are interpreted as timestamps for the following history
entry.

The return value is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered, an error occurs while reading
or writing the history file, an invalid offset or range is supplied as an argument to -d, or
the history expansion supplied as an argument to -p fails.

jobs [-lnprs] [ jobspec ... ]
jobs -x command [ args ... ]
The first form lists the active jobs. The options have the following meanings:
-l List process IDs in addition to the normal information.
-n Display information only about jobs that have changed status since the user was last
notified of their status.
-p List only the process ID of the job's process group leader.
-r Display only running jobs.
-s Display only stopped jobs.

If jobspec is supplied, jobs restricts output to information about that job. The return sta‐
tus is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered or an invalid jobspec is supplied.

If the -x option is supplied, jobs replaces any jobspec found in command or args with the cor‐
responding process group ID, and executes command, passing it args, returning its exit status.

kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] id [ ... ]
kill -l|-L [sigspec | exit_status]
Send the signal specified by sigspec or signum to the processes named by each id. Each id may
be a job specification jobspec or a process ID pid. sigspec is either a case-insensitive sig‐
nal name such as SIGKILL (with or without the SIG prefix) or a signal number; signum is a sig‐
nal number. If sigspec is not supplied, then kill sends SIGTERM.

The -l option lists the signal names. If any arguments are supplied when -l is given, kill
lists the names of the signals corresponding to the arguments, and the return status is 0.
The exit_status argument to -l is a number specifying either a signal number or the exit sta‐
tus of a process terminated by a signal; if it is supplied, kill prints the name of the signal
that caused the process to terminate. kill assumes that process exit statuses are greater
than 128; anything less than that is a signal number. The -L option is equivalent to -l.

kill returns true if at least one signal was successfully sent, or false if an error occurs or
an invalid option is encountered.

let arg [arg ...]
Each arg is evaluated as an arithmetic expression (see ARITHMETIC EVALUATION above). If the
last arg evaluates to 0, let returns 1; otherwise let returns 0.

local [option] [name[=value] ... | - ]
For each argument, create a local variable named name and assign it value. The option can be
any of the options accepted by declare. When local is used within a function, it causes the
variable name to have a visible scope restricted to that function and its children. It is an
error to use local when not within a function.

If name is -, it makes the set of shell options local to the function in which local is in‐
voked: any shell options changed using the set builtin inside the function after the call to
local are restored to their original values when the function returns. The restore is per‐
formed as if a series of set commands were executed to restore the values that were in place
before the function.

With no operands, local writes a list of local variables to the standard output.

The return status is 0 unless local is used outside a function, an invalid name is supplied,
or name is a readonly variable.

logout [n]
Exit a login shell, returning a status of n to the shell's parent.

mapfile [-d delim] [-n count] [-O origin] [-s count] [-t] [-u fd] [-C callback] [-c quantum] [array]
readarray [-d delim] [-n count] [-O origin] [-s count] [-t] [-u fd] [-C callback] [-c quantum] [ar‐
ray]
Read lines from the standard input, or from file descriptor fd if the -u option is supplied,
into the indexed array variable array. The variable MAPFILE is the default array. Options,
if supplied, have the following meanings:
-d Use the first character of delim to terminate each input line, rather than newline. If
delim is the empty string, mapfile will terminate a line when it reads a NUL character.
-n Copy at most count lines. If count is 0, copy all lines.
-O Begin assigning to array at index origin. The default index is 0.
-s Discard the first count lines read.
-t Remove a trailing delim (default newline) from each line read.
-u Read lines from file descriptor fd instead of the standard input.
-C Evaluate callback each time quantum lines are read. The -c option specifies quantum.
-c Specify the number of lines read between each call to callback.

If -C is specified without -c, the default quantum is 5000. When callback is evaluated, it is
supplied the index of the next array element to be assigned and the line to be assigned to
that element as additional arguments. callback is evaluated after the line is read but before
the array element is assigned.

If not supplied with an explicit origin, mapfile will clear array before assigning to it.

mapfile returns zero unless an invalid option or option argument is supplied, array is invalid
or unassignable, or if array is not an indexed array.

popd [-n] [+n] [-n]
Remove entries from the directory stack. The elements are numbered from 0 starting at the
first directory listed by dirs, so popd is equivalent to “popd +0.” With no arguments, popd
removes the top directory from the stack, and changes to the new top directory. Arguments, if
supplied, have the following meanings:
-n Suppress the normal change of directory when removing directories from the stack, only
manipulate the stack.
+n Remove the nth entry counting from the left of the list shown by dirs, starting with
zero, from the stack. For example: “popd +0” removes the first directory, “popd +1”
the second.
-n Remove the nth entry counting from the right of the list shown by dirs, starting with
zero. For example: “popd -0” removes the last directory, “popd -1” the next to last.

If the top element of the directory stack is modified, and the -n option was not supplied,
popd uses the cd builtin to change to the directory at the top of the stack. If the cd fails,
popd returns a non-zero value.

Otherwise, popd returns false if an invalid option is supplied, the directory stack is empty,
or n specifies a non-existent directory stack entry.

If the popd command is successful, bash runs dirs to show the final contents of the directory
stack, and the return status is 0.

printf [-v var] format [arguments]
Write the formatted arguments to the standard output under the control of the format. The -v
option assigns the output to the variable var rather than printing it to the standard output.

The format is a character string which contains three types of objects: plain characters,
which are simply copied to standard output, character escape sequences, which are converted
and copied to the standard output, and format specifications, each of which causes printing of
the next successive argument. In addition to the standard printf(3) format characters cCsS‐
ndiouxXeEfFgGaA, printf interprets the following additional format specifiers:
%b causes printf to expand backslash escape sequences in the corresponding argument in the
same way as echo -e.
%q causes printf to output the corresponding argument in a format that can be reused as
shell input. %q and %Q use the $'' quoting style if any characters in the argument
string require it, and backslash quoting otherwise. If the format string uses the
printf alternate form, these two formats quote the argument string using single quotes.
%Q like %q, but applies any supplied precision to the argument before quoting it.
%(datefmt)T
causes printf to output the date-time string resulting from using datefmt as a format
string for strftime(3). The corresponding argument is an integer representing the num‐
ber of seconds since the epoch. This format specifier recognizes two special argument
values: -1 represents the current time, and -2 represents the time the shell was in‐
voked. If no argument is specified, conversion behaves as if -1 had been supplied.
This is an exception to the usual printf behavior.

The %b, %q, and %T format specifiers all use the field width and precision arguments from the
format specification and write that many bytes from (or use that wide a field for) the ex‐
panded argument, which usually contains more characters than the original.

The %n format specifier accepts a corresponding argument that is treated as a shell variable
name.

The %s and %c format specifiers accept an l (long) modifier, which forces them to convert the
argument string to a wide-character string and apply any supplied field width and precision in
terms of characters, not bytes. The %S and %C format specifiers are equivalent to %ls and
%lc, respectively.

Arguments to non-string format specifiers are treated as C constants, except that a leading
plus or minus sign is allowed, and if the leading character is a single or double quote, the
value is the numeric value of the following character, using the current locale.

The format is reused as necessary to consume all of the arguments. If the format requires
more arguments than are supplied, the extra format specifications behave as if a zero value or
null string, as appropriate, had been supplied. The return value is zero on success, non-zero
if an invalid option is supplied or a write or assignment error occurs.

pushd [-n] [+n] [-n]
pushd [-n] [dir]
Add a directory to the top of the directory stack, or rotate the stack, making the new top of
the stack the current working directory. With no arguments, pushd exchanges the top two ele‐
ments of the directory stack. Arguments, if supplied, have the following meanings:
-n Suppress the normal change of directory when rotating or adding directories to the
stack, only manipulate the stack.
+n Rotate the stack so that the nth directory (counting from the left of the list shown by
dirs, starting with zero) is at the top.
-n Rotates the stack so that the nth directory (counting from the right of the list shown
by dirs, starting with zero) is at the top.
dir Adds dir to the directory stack at the top.

After the stack has been modified, if the -n option was not supplied, pushd uses the cd
builtin to change to the directory at the top of the stack. If the cd fails, pushd returns a
non-zero value.

Otherwise, if no arguments are supplied, pushd returns zero unless the directory stack is
empty. When rotating the directory stack, pushd returns zero unless the directory stack is
empty or n specifies a non-existent directory stack element.

If the pushd command is successful, bash runs dirs to show the final contents of the directory
stack.

pwd [-LP]
Print the absolute pathname of the current working directory. The pathname printed contains
no symbolic links if the -P option is supplied or the -o physical option to the set builtin
command is enabled. If the -L option is used, the pathname printed may contain symbolic
links. The return status is 0 unless an error occurs while reading the name of the current
directory or an invalid option is supplied.

read [-Eers] [-a aname] [-d delim] [-i text] [-n nchars] [-N nchars] [-p prompt] [-t timeout] [-u fd]
[name ...]
Read one line from the standard input, or from the file descriptor fd supplied as an argument
to the -u option, split it into words as described above under Word Splitting, and assign the
first word to the first name, the second word to the second name, and so on. If there are
more words than names, the remaining words and their intervening delimiters are assigned to
the last name. If there are fewer words read from the input stream than names, the remaining
names are assigned empty values. The characters in the value of the IFS variable are used to
split the line into words using the same rules the shell uses for expansion (described above
under Word Splitting). The backslash character (\) removes any special meaning for the next
character read and is used for line continuation.

Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:
-a aname
The words are assigned to sequential indices of the array variable aname, starting at
0. aname is unset before any new values are assigned. Other name arguments are ig‐
nored.
-d delim
The first character of delim terminates the input line, rather than newline. If delim
is the empty string, read will terminate a line when it reads a NUL character.
-e If the standard input is coming from a terminal, read uses readline (see READLINE
above) to obtain the line. Readline uses the current (or default, if line editing was
not previously active) editing settings, but uses readline's default filename comple‐
tion.
-E If the standard input is coming from a terminal, read uses readline (see READLINE
above) to obtain the line. Readline uses the current (or default, if line editing was
not previously active) editing settings, but uses bash's default completion, including
programmable completion.
-i text
If readline is being used to read the line, read places text into the editing buffer
before editing begins.
-n nchars
read returns after reading nchars characters rather than waiting for a complete line of
input, unless it encounters EOF or read times out, but honors a delimiter if it reads
fewer than nchars characters before the delimiter.
-N nchars
read returns after reading exactly nchars characters rather than waiting for a complete
line of input, unless it encounters EOF or read times out. Any delimiter characters in
the input are not treated specially and do not cause read to return until it has read
nchars characters. The result is not split on the characters in IFS; the intent is
that the variable is assigned exactly the characters read (with the exception of back‐
slash; see the -r option below).
-p prompt
Display prompt on standard error, without a trailing newline, before attempting to read
any input, but only if input is coming from a terminal.
-r Backslash does not act as an escape character. The backslash is considered to be part
of the line. In particular, a backslash-newline pair may not then be used as a line
continuation.
-s Silent mode. If input is coming from a terminal, characters are not echoed.
-t timeout
Cause read to time out and return failure if it does not read a complete line of input
(or a specified number of characters) within timeout seconds. timeout may be a decimal
number with a fractional portion following the decimal point. This option is only ef‐
fective if read is reading input from a terminal, pipe, or other special file; it has
no effect when reading from regular files. If read times out, it saves any partial in‐
put read into the specified variable name, and the exit status is greater than 128. If
timeout is 0, read returns immediately, without trying to read any data. In this case,
the exit status is 0 if input is available on the specified file descriptor, or the
read will return EOF, non-zero otherwise.
-u fd Read input from file descriptor fd instead of the standard input.

Other than the case where delim is the empty string, read ignores any NUL characters in the
input.

If no names are supplied, read assigns the line read, without the ending delimiter but other‐
wise unmodified, to the variable REPLY.

The exit status is zero, unless end-of-file is encountered, read times out (in which case the
status is greater than 128), a variable assignment error (such as assigning to a readonly
variable) occurs, or an invalid file descriptor is supplied as the argument to -u.

readonly [-aAf] [-p] [name[=word] ...]
The given names are marked readonly; the values of these names may not be changed by subse‐
quent assignment or unset. If the -f option is supplied, each name refers to a shell func‐
tion. The -a option restricts the variables to indexed arrays; the -A option restricts the
variables to associative arrays. If both options are supplied, -A takes precedence. If no
name arguments are supplied, or if the -p option is supplied, print a list of all readonly
names. The other options may be used to restrict the output to a subset of the set of read‐
only names. The -p option displays output in a format that may be reused as input.

readonly allows the value of a variable to be set at the same time the readonly attribute is
changed by following the variable name with =value. This sets the value of the variable is to
value while modifying the readonly attribute.

The return status is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered, one of the names is not a
valid shell variable name, or -f is supplied with a name that is not a function.

return [n]
Stop executing a shell function or sourced file and return the value specified by n to its
caller. If n is omitted, the return status is that of the last command executed. If return
is executed by a trap handler, the last command used to determine the status is the last com‐
mand executed before the trap handler. If return is executed during a DEBUG trap, the last
command used to determine the status is the last command executed by the trap handler before
return was invoked.

When return is used to terminate execution of a script being executed by the . (source) com‐
mand, it causes the shell to stop executing that script and return either n or the exit status
of the last command executed within the script as the exit status of the script. If n is sup‐
plied, the return value is its least significant 8 bits.

Any command associated with the RETURN trap is executed before execution resumes after the
function or script.

The return status is non-zero if return is supplied a non-numeric argument, or is used outside
a function and not during execution of a script by . or source.

set [-abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT] [-o option-name] [--] [-] [arg ...]
set [+abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT] [+o option-name] [--] [-] [arg ...]
set -o
set +o Without options, display the name and value of each shell variable in a format that can be
reused as input for setting or resetting the currently-set variables. Read-only variables
cannot be reset. In posix mode, only shell variables are listed. The output is sorted ac‐
cording to the current locale. When options are specified, they set or unset shell attrib‐
utes. Any arguments remaining after option processing are treated as values for the posi‐
tional parameters and are assigned, in order, to $1, $2, ..., $n. Options, if specified, have
the following meanings:
-a Each variable or function that is created or modified is given the export attribute
and marked for export to the environment of subsequent commands.
-b Report the status of terminated background jobs immediately, rather than before the
next primary prompt or after a foreground command terminates. This is effective only
when job control is enabled.
-e Exit immediately if a pipeline (which may consist of a single simple command), a list,
or a compound command (see SHELL GRAMMAR above), exits with a non-zero status. The
shell does not exit if the command that fails is part of the command list immediately
following a while or until reserved word, part of the test following the if or elif
reserved words, part of any command executed in a && or || list except the command
following the final && or ||, any command in a pipeline but the last (subject to the
state of the pipefail shell option), or if the command's return value is being in‐
verted with !. If a compound command other than a subshell returns a non-zero status
because a command failed while -e was being ignored, the shell does not exit. A trap
on ERR, if set, is executed before the shell exits. This option applies to the shell
environment and each subshell environment separately (see COMMAND EXECUTION ENVIRON‐
MENT above), and may cause subshells to exit before executing all the commands in the
subshell.

If a compound command or shell function executes in a context where -e is being ig‐
nored, none of the commands executed within the compound command or function body will
be affected by the -e setting, even if -e is set and a command returns a failure sta‐
tus. If a compound command or shell function sets -e while executing in a context
where -e is ignored, that setting will not have any effect until the compound command
or the command containing the function call completes.
-f Disable pathname expansion.
-h Remember the location of commands as they are looked up for execution. This is en‐
abled by default.
-k All arguments in the form of assignment statements are placed in the environment for a
command, not just those that precede the command name.
-m Monitor mode. Job control is enabled. This option is on by default for interactive
shells on systems that support it (see JOB CONTROL above). All processes run in a
separate process group. When a background job completes, the shell prints a line con‐
taining its exit status.
-n Read commands but do not execute them. This may be used to check a shell script for
syntax errors. This is ignored by interactive shells.
-o option-name
The option-name can be one of the following:
allexport
Same as -a.
braceexpand
Same as -B.
emacs Use an emacs-style command line editing interface. This is enabled by default
when the shell is interactive, unless the shell is started with the --noedit‐
ing option. This also affects the editing interface used for read -e.
errexit Same as -e.
errtrace
Same as -E.
functrace
Same as -T.
hashall Same as -h.
histexpand
Same as -H.
history Enable command history, as described above under HISTORY. This option is on
by default in interactive shells.
ignoreeof
The effect is as if the shell command “IGNOREEOF=10” had been executed (see
Shell Variables above).
keyword Same as -k.
monitor Same as -m.
noclobber
Same as -C.
noexec Same as -n.
noglob Same as -f.
nolog Currently ignored.
notify Same as -b.
nounset Same as -u.
onecmd Same as -t.
physical
Same as -P.
pipefail
If set, the return value of a pipeline is the value of the last (rightmost)
command to exit with a non-zero status, or zero if all commands in the
pipeline exit successfully. This option is disabled by default.
posix Enable posix mode; change the behavior of bash where the default operation
differs from the POSIX standard to match the standard. See SEE ALSO below for
a reference to a document that details how posix mode affects bash's behavior.
privileged
Same as -p.
verbose Same as -v.
vi Use a vi-style command line editing interface. This also affects the editing
interface used for read -e.
xtrace Same as -x.
If -o is supplied with no option-name, set prints the current shell option settings.
If +o is supplied with no option-name, set prints a series of set commands to recreate
the current option settings on the standard output.
-p Turn on privileged mode. In this mode, the shell does not read the $ENV and $BASH_ENV
files, shell functions are not inherited from the environment, and the SHELLOPTS,
BASHOPTS, CDPATH, and GLOBIGNORE variables, if they appear in the environment, are ig‐
nored. If the shell is started with the effective user (group) id not equal to the
real user (group) id, and the -p option is not supplied, these actions are taken and
the effective user id is set to the real user id. If the -p option is supplied at
startup, the effective user id is not reset. Turning this option off causes the ef‐
fective user and group ids to be set to the real user and group ids.
-r Enable restricted shell mode. This option cannot be unset once it has been set.
-t Exit after reading and executing one command.
-u Treat unset variables and parameters other than the special parameters “@” and “*”, or
array variables subscripted with “@” or “*”, as an error when performing parameter ex‐
pansion. If expansion is attempted on an unset variable or parameter, the shell
prints an error message, and, if not interactive, exits with a non-zero status.
-v Print shell input lines as they are read.
-x After expanding each simple command, for command, case command, select command, or
arithmetic for command, display the expanded value of PS4, followed by the command and
its expanded arguments or associated word list, to the standard error.
-B The shell performs brace expansion (see Brace Expansion above). This is on by de‐
fault.
-C If set, bash does not overwrite an existing file with the >, >&, and <> redirection
operators. Using the redirection operator >| instead of > will override this and
force the creation of an output file.
-E If set, any trap on ERR is inherited by shell functions, command substitutions, and
commands executed in a subshell environment. The ERR trap is normally not inherited
in such cases.
-H Enable ! style history substitution. This option is on by default when the shell is
interactive.
-P If set, the shell does not resolve symbolic links when executing commands such as cd
that change the current working directory. It uses the physical directory structure
instead. By default, bash follows the logical chain of directories when performing
commands which change the current directory.
-T If set, any traps on DEBUG and RETURN are inherited by shell functions, command sub‐
stitutions, and commands executed in a subshell environment. The DEBUG and RETURN
traps are normally not inherited in such cases.
-- If no arguments follow this option, unset the positional parameters. Otherwise, set
the positional parameters to the args, even if some of them begin with a -.
- Signal the end of options, and assign all remaining args to the positional parameters.
The -x and -v options are turned off. If there are no args, the positional parameters
remain unchanged.

The options are off by default unless otherwise noted. Using + rather than - causes these op‐
tions to be turned off. The options can also be specified as arguments to an invocation of
the shell. The current set of options may be found in $-. The return status is always zero
unless an invalid option is encountered.

shift [n]
Rename positional parameters from n+1 ... to $1 .... Parameters represented by the numbers $#
down to $#-n+1 are unset. n must be a non-negative number less than or equal to $#. If n is
0, no parameters are changed. If n is not given, it is assumed to be 1. If n is greater than
$#, the positional parameters are not changed. The return status is greater than zero if n is
greater than $# or less than zero; otherwise 0.

shopt [-pqsu] [-o] [optname ...]
Toggle the values of settings controlling optional shell behavior. The settings can be either
those listed below, or, if the -o option is used, those available with the -o option to the
set builtin command.

With no options, or with the -p option, display a list of all settable options, with an indi‐
cation of whether or not each is set; if any optnames are supplied, the output is restricted
to those options. The -p option displays output in a form that may be reused as input.

Other options have the following meanings:
-s Enable (set) each optname.
-u Disable (unset) each optname.
-q Suppresses normal output (quiet mode); the return status indicates whether the optname
is set or unset. If multiple optname arguments are supplied with -q, the return status
is zero if all optnames are enabled; non-zero otherwise.
-o Restricts the values of optname to be those defined for the -o option to the set
builtin.

If either -s or -u is used with no optname arguments, shopt shows only those options which are
set or unset, respectively. Unless otherwise noted, the shopt options are disabled (unset) by
default.

The return status when listing options is zero if all optnames are enabled, non-zero other‐
wise. When setting or unsetting options, the return status is zero unless an optname is not a
valid shell option.

The list of shopt options is:

array_expand_once
If set, the shell suppresses multiple evaluation of associative and indexed array sub‐
scripts during arithmetic expression evaluation, while executing builtins that can
perform variable assignments, and while executing builtins that perform array derefer‐
encing.
assoc_expand_once
Deprecated; a synonym for array_expand_once.
autocd If set, a command name that is the name of a directory is executed as if it were the
argument to the cd command. This option is only used by interactive shells.
bash_source_fullpath
If set, filenames added to the BASH_SOURCE array variable are converted to full path‐
names (see Shell Variables above).
cdable_vars
If set, an argument to the cd builtin command that is not a directory is assumed to be
the name of a variable whose value is the directory to change to.
cdspell If set, the cd command attempts to correct minor errors in the spelling of a directory
component. Minor errors include transposed characters, a missing character, and one
extra character. If cd corrects the directory name, it prints the corrected filename,
and the command proceeds. This option is only used by interactive shells.
checkhash
If set, bash checks that a command found in the hash table exists before trying to ex‐
ecute it. If a hashed command no longer exists, bash performs a normal path search.
checkjobs
If set, bash lists the status of any stopped and running jobs before exiting an inter‐
active shell. If any jobs are running, bash defers the exit until a second exit is
attempted without an intervening command (see JOB CONTROL above). The shell always
postpones exiting if any jobs are stopped.
checkwinsize
If set, bash checks the window size after each external (non-builtin) command and, if
necessary, updates the values of LINES and COLUMNS, using the file descriptor associ‐
ated with the standard error if it is a terminal. This option is enabled by default.
cmdhist If set, bash attempts to save all lines of a multiple-line command in the same history
entry. This allows easy re-editing of multi-line commands. This option is enabled by
default, but only has an effect if command history is enabled, as described above un‐
der HISTORY.
compat31
compat32
compat40
compat41
compat42
compat43
compat44
These control aspects of the shell's compatibility mode (see SHELL COMPATIBILITY MODE
below).
complete_fullquote
If set, bash quotes all shell metacharacters in filenames and directory names when
performing completion. If not set, bash removes metacharacters such as the dollar
sign from the set of characters that will be quoted in completed filenames when these
metacharacters appear in shell variable references in words to be completed. This
means that dollar signs in variable names that expand to directories will not be
quoted; however, any dollar signs appearing in filenames will not be quoted, either.
This is active only when bash is using backslashes to quote completed filenames. This
variable is set by default, which is the default bash behavior in versions through
4.2.
direxpand
If set, bash replaces directory names with the results of word expansion when perform‐
ing filename completion. This changes the contents of the readline editing buffer.
If not set, bash attempts to preserve what the user typed.
dirspell
If set, bash attempts spelling correction on directory names during word completion if
the directory name initially supplied does not exist.
dotglob If set, bash includes filenames beginning with a “.” in the results of pathname expan‐
sion. The filenames . and .. must always be matched explicitly, even if dotglob is
set.
execfail
If set, a non-interactive shell will not exit if it cannot execute the file specified
as an argument to the exec builtin. An interactive shell does not exit if exec fails.
expand_aliases
If set, aliases are expanded as described above under ALIASES. This option is enabled
by default for interactive shells.
extdebug
If set at shell invocation, or in a shell startup file, arrange to execute the debug‐
ger profile before the shell starts, identical to the --debugger option. If set after
invocation, behavior intended for use by debuggers is enabled:
1. The -F option to the declare builtin displays the source file name and line
number corresponding to each function name supplied as an argument.
2. If the command run by the DEBUG trap returns a non-zero value, the next command
is skipped and not executed.
3. If the command run by the DEBUG trap returns a value of 2, and the shell is ex‐
ecuting in a subroutine (a shell function or a shell script executed by the .
or source builtins), the shell simulates a call to return.
4. BASH_ARGC and BASH_ARGV are updated as described in their descriptions above).
5. Function tracing is enabled: command substitution, shell functions, and sub‐
shells invoked with ( command ) inherit the DEBUG and RETURN traps.
6. Error tracing is enabled: command substitution, shell functions, and subshells
invoked with ( command ) inherit the ERR trap.
extglob If set, enable the extended pattern matching features described above under Pathname
Expansion.
extquote
If set, $'string' and $"string" quoting is performed within ${parameter} expansions
enclosed in double quotes. This option is enabled by default.
failglob
If set, patterns which fail to match filenames during pathname expansion result in an
expansion error.
force_fignore
If set, the suffixes specified by the FIGNORE shell variable cause words to be ignored
when performing word completion even if the ignored words are the only possible com‐
pletions. See Shell Variables above for a description of FIGNORE. This option is en‐
abled by default.
globasciiranges
If set, range expressions used in pattern matching bracket expressions (see Pattern
Matching above) behave as if in the traditional C locale when performing comparisons.
That is, pattern matching does not take the current locale's collating sequence into
account, so b will not collate between A and B, and upper-case and lower-case ASCII
characters will collate together.
globskipdots
If set, pathname expansion will never match the filenames . and .., even if the pat‐
tern begins with a “.”. This option is enabled by default.
globstar
If set, the pattern ** used in a pathname expansion context will match all files and
zero or more directories and subdirectories. If the pattern is followed by a /, only
directories and subdirectories match.
gnu_errfmt
If set, shell error messages are written in the standard GNU error message format.
histappend
If set, the history list is appended to the file named by the value of the HISTFILE
variable when the shell exits, rather than overwriting the file.
histreedit
If set, and readline is being used, the user is given the opportunity to re-edit a
failed history substitution.
histverify
If set, and readline is being used, the results of history substitution are not imme‐
diately passed to the shell parser. Instead, the resulting line is loaded into the
readline editing buffer, allowing further modification.
hostcomplete
If set, and readline is being used, bash will attempt to perform hostname completion
when a word containing a @ is being completed (see Completing under READLINE above).
This is enabled by default.
huponexit
If set, bash will send SIGHUP to all jobs when an interactive login shell exits.
inherit_errexit
If set, command substitution inherits the value of the errexit option, instead of un‐
setting it in the subshell environment. This option is enabled when posix mode is en‐
abled.
interactive_comments
In an interactive shell, a word beginning with # causes that word and all remaining
characters on that line to be ignored, as in a non-interactive shell (see COMMENTS
above). This option is enabled by default.
lastpipe
If set, and job control is not active, the shell runs the last command of a pipeline
not executed in the background in the current shell environment.
lithist If set, and the cmdhist option is enabled, multi-line commands are saved to the his‐
tory with embedded newlines rather than using semicolon separators where possible.
localvar_inherit
If set, local variables inherit the value and attributes of a variable of the same
name that exists at a previous scope before any new value is assigned. The nameref
attribute is not inherited.
localvar_unset
If set, calling unset on local variables in previous function scopes marks them so
subsequent lookups find them unset until that function returns. This is identical to
the behavior of unsetting local variables at the current function scope.
login_shell
The shell sets this option if it is started as a login shell (see INVOCATION above).
The value may not be changed.
mailwarn
If set, and a file that bash is checking for mail has been accessed since the last
time it was checked, bash displays the message “The mail in mailfile has been read”.
no_empty_cmd_completion
If set, and readline is being used, bash does not search PATH for possible completions
when completion is attempted on an empty line.
nocaseglob
If set, bash matches filenames in a case-insensitive fashion when performing pathname
expansion (see Pathname Expansion above).
nocasematch
If set, bash matches patterns in a case-insensitive fashion when performing matching
while executing case or [[ conditional commands, when performing pattern substitution
word expansions, or when filtering possible completions as part of programmable com‐
pletion.
noexpand_translation
If set, bash encloses the translated results of $"..." quoting in single quotes in‐
stead of double quotes. If the string is not translated, this has no effect.
nullglob
If set, pathname expansion patterns which match no files (see Pathname Expansion
above) expand to nothing and are removed, rather than expanding to themselves.
patsub_replacement
If set, bash expands occurrences of & in the replacement string of pattern substitu‐
tion to the text matched by the pattern, as described under Parameter Expansion above.
This option is enabled by default.
progcomp
If set, enable the programmable completion facilities (see Programmable Completion
above). This option is enabled by default.
progcomp_alias
If set, and programmable completion is enabled, bash treats a command name that
doesn't have any completions as a possible alias and attempts alias expansion. If it
has an alias, bash attempts programmable completion using the command word resulting
from the expanded alias.
promptvars
If set, prompt strings undergo parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic
expansion, and quote removal after being expanded as described in PROMPTING above.
This option is enabled by default.
restricted_shell
The shell sets this option if it is started in restricted mode (see RESTRICTED SHELL
below). The value may not be changed. This is not reset when the startup files are
executed, allowing the startup files to discover whether or not a shell is restricted.
shift_verbose
If set, the shift builtin prints an error message when the shift count exceeds the
number of positional parameters.
sourcepath
If set, the . (source) builtin uses the value of PATH to find the directory containing
the file supplied as an argument when the -p option is not supplied. This option is
enabled by default.
varredir_close
If set, the shell automatically closes file descriptors assigned using the {varname}
redirection syntax (see REDIRECTION above) instead of leaving them open when the com‐
mand completes.
xpg_echo
If set, the echo builtin expands backslash-escape sequences by default. If the posix
shell option is also enabled, echo does not interpret any options.

suspend [-f]
Suspend the execution of this shell until it receives a SIGCONT signal. A login shell, or a
shell without job control enabled, cannot be suspended; the -f option will override this and
force the suspension. The return status is 0 unless the shell is a login shell or job control
is not enabled and -f is not supplied.

test expr
[ expr ]
Return a status of 0 (true) or 1 (false) depending on the evaluation of the conditional ex‐
pression expr. Each operator and operand must be a separate argument. Expressions are com‐
posed of the primaries described above under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS. test does not accept
any options, nor does it accept and ignore an argument of -- as signifying the end of options.

Expressions may be combined using the following operators, listed in decreasing order of
precedence. The evaluation depends on the number of arguments; see below. test uses operator
precedence when there are five or more arguments.
! expr True if expr is false.
( expr )
Returns the value of expr. This may be used to override normal operator precedence.
expr1 -a expr2
True if both expr1 and expr2 are true.
expr1 -o expr2
True if either expr1 or expr2 is true.

test and [ evaluate conditional expressions using a set of rules based on the number of argu‐
ments.

0 arguments
The expression is false.
1 argument
The expression is true if and only if the argument is not null.
2 arguments
If the first argument is !, the expression is true if and only if the second argument
is null. If the first argument is one of the unary conditional operators listed above
under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS, the expression is true if the unary test is true. If
the first argument is not a valid unary conditional operator, the expression is false.
3 arguments
The following conditions are applied in the order listed. If the second argument is
one of the binary conditional operators listed above under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS, the
result of the expression is the result of the binary test using the first and third ar‐
guments as operands. The -a and -o operators are considered binary operators when
there are three arguments. If the first argument is !, the value is the negation of
the two-argument test using the second and third arguments. If the first argument is
exactly ( and the third argument is exactly ), the result is the one-argument test of
the second argument. Otherwise, the expression is false.
4 arguments
The following conditions are applied in the order listed. If the first argument is !,
the result is the negation of the three-argument expression composed of the remaining
arguments. If the first argument is exactly ( and the fourth argument is exactly ),
the result is the two-argument test of the second and third arguments. Otherwise, the
expression is parsed and evaluated according to precedence using the rules listed
above.
5 or more arguments
The expression is parsed and evaluated according to precedence using the rules listed
above.

When the shell is in posix mode, or if the expression is part of the [[ command, the < and >
operators sort using the current locale. If the shell is not in posix mode, the test and [
commands sort lexicographically using ASCII ordering.

The historical operator-precedence parsing with 4 or more arguments can lead to ambiguities
when it encounters strings that look like primaries. The POSIX standard has deprecated the -a
and -o primaries and enclosing expressions within parentheses. Scripts should no longer use
them. It's much more reliable to restrict test invocations to a single primary, and to re‐
place uses of -a and -o with the shell's && and || list operators.

times Print the accumulated user and system times for the shell and for processes run from the
shell. The return status is 0.

trap [-lpP] [[action] sigspec ...]
The action is a command that is read and executed when the shell receives any of the signals
sigspec. If action is absent (and there is a single sigspec) or -, each specified sigspec is
reset to the value it had when the shell was started. If action is the null string the signal
specified by each sigspec is ignored by the shell and by the commands it invokes.

If no arguments are supplied, trap displays the actions associated with each trapped signal as
a set of trap commands that can be reused as shell input to restore the current signal dispo‐
sitions. If -p is given, and action is not present, then trap displays the actions associated
with each sigspec or, if none are supplied, for all trapped signals, as a set of trap commands
that can be reused as shell input to restore the current signal dispositions. The -P option
behaves similarly, but displays only the actions associated with each sigspec argument. -P
requires at least one sigspec argument. The -P or -p options may be used in a subshell envi‐
ronment (e.g., command substitution) and, as long as they are used before trap is used to
change a signal's handling, will display the state of its parent's traps.

The -l option prints a list of signal names and their corresponding numbers. Each sigspec is
either a signal name defined in , or a signal number. Signal names are case insen‐
sitive and the SIG prefix is optional. If -l is supplied with no sigspec arguments, it prints
a list of valid signal names.

If a sigspec is EXIT (0), action is executed on exit from the shell. If a sigspec is DEBUG,
action is executed before every simple command, for command, case command, select command, ((
arithmetic command, [[ conditional command, arithmetic for command, and before the first com‐
mand executes in a shell function (see SHELL GRAMMAR above). Refer to the description of the
extdebug shell option (see shopt above) for details of its effect on the DEBUG trap. If a
sigspec is RETURN, action is executed each time a shell function or a script executed with the
. or source builtins finishes executing.

If a sigspec is ERR, action is executed whenever a pipeline (which may consist of a single
simple command), a list, or a compound command returns a non-zero exit status, subject to the
following conditions. The ERR trap is not executed if the failed command is part of the com‐
mand list immediately following a while or until reserved word, part of the test in an if
statement, part of a command executed in a && or || list except the command following the fi‐
nal && or ||, any command in a pipeline but the last (subject to the state of the pipefail
shell option), or if the command's return value is being inverted using !. These are the same
conditions obeyed by the errexit (-e) option.

When the shell is not interactive, signals ignored upon entry to the shell cannot be trapped
or reset. Interactive shells permit trapping signals ignored on entry. Trapped signals that
are not being ignored are reset to their original values in a subshell or subshell environment
when one is created. The return status is false if any sigspec is invalid; otherwise trap re‐
turns true.

true Does nothing, returns a 0 status.

type [-aftpP] name [name ...]
Indicate how each name would be interpreted if used as a command name.

If the -t option is used, type prints a string which is one of alias, keyword, function,
builtin, or file if name is an alias, shell reserved word, function, builtin, or executable
file, respectively. If the name is not found, type prints nothing and returns a non-zero exit
status.

If the -p option is used, type either returns the pathname of the executable file that would
be found by searching $PATH for name or nothing if “type -t name” would not return file. The
-P option forces a PATH search for each name, even if “type -t name” would not return file.
If name is present in the table of hashed commands, -p and -P print the hashed value, which is
not necessarily the file that appears first in PATH.

If the -a option is used, type prints all of the places that contain a command named name.
This includes aliases, reserved words, functions, and builtins, but the path search options
(-p and -P) can be supplied to restrict the output to executable files. type does not consult
the table of hashed commands when using -a with -p, and only performs a PATH search for name.

The -f option suppresses shell function lookup, as with the command builtin. type returns
true if all of the arguments are found, false if any are not found.

ulimit [-HS] -a
ulimit [-HS] [-bcdefiklmnpqrstuvxPRT [limit]]
Provides control over the resources available to the shell and to processes it starts, on sys‐
tems that allow such control.

The -H and -S options specify whether the hard or soft limit is set for the given resource. A
hard limit cannot be increased by a non-root user once it is set; a soft limit may be in‐
creased up to the value of the hard limit. If neither -H nor -S is specified, ulimit sets
both the soft and hard limits.

The value of limit can be a number in the unit specified for the resource or one of the spe‐
cial values hard, soft, or unlimited, which stand for the current hard limit, the current soft
limit, and no limit, respectively. If limit is omitted, ulimit prints the current value of
the soft limit of the resource, unless the -H option is given. When more than one resource is
specified, the limit name and unit, if appropriate, are printed before the value. Other op‐
tions are interpreted as follows:
-a Report all current limits; no limits are set.
-b The maximum socket buffer size.
-c The maximum size of core files created.
-d The maximum size of a process's data segment.
-e The maximum scheduling priority (“nice”).
-f The maximum size of files written by the shell and its children.
-i The maximum number of pending signals.
-k The maximum number of kqueues that may be allocated.
-l The maximum size that may be locked into memory.
-m The maximum resident set size (many systems do not honor this limit).
-n The maximum number of open file descriptors (most systems do not allow this value to be
set).
-p The pipe size in 512-byte blocks (this may not be set).
-q The maximum number of bytes in POSIX message queues.
-r The maximum real-time scheduling priority.
-s The maximum stack size.
-t The maximum amount of cpu time in seconds.
-u The maximum number of processes available to a single user.
-v The maximum amount of virtual memory available to the shell and, on some systems, to
its children.
-x The maximum number of file locks.
-P The maximum number of pseudoterminals.
-R The maximum time a real-time process can run before blocking, in microseconds.
-T The maximum number of threads.

If limit is supplied, and the -a option is not used, limit is the new value of the specified
resource. If no option is supplied, then -f is assumed.

Values are in 1024-byte increments, except for -t, which is in seconds; -R, which is in mi‐
croseconds; -p, which is in units of 512-byte blocks; -P, -T, -b, -k, -n, and -u, which are
unscaled values; and, when in posix mode, -c and -f, which are in 512-byte increments. The
return status is 0 unless an invalid option or argument is supplied, or an error occurs while
setting a new limit.

umask [-p] [-S] [mode]
Set the user file-creation mask to mode. If mode begins with a digit, it is interpreted as an
octal number; otherwise it is interpreted as a symbolic mode mask similar to that accepted by
chmod(1). If mode is omitted, umask prints the current value of the mask. The -S option
without a mode argument prints the mask in a symbolic format; the default output is an octal
number. If the -p option is supplied, and mode is omitted, the output is in a form that may
be reused as input. The return status is zero if the mode was successfully changed or if no
mode argument was supplied, and non-zero otherwise.

unalias [-a] [name ...]
Remove each name from the list of defined aliases. If -a is supplied, remove all alias defin‐
itions. The return value is true unless a supplied name is not a defined alias.

unset [-fv] [-n] [name ...]
For each name, remove the corresponding variable or function. If the -v option is given, each
name refers to a shell variable, and that variable is removed. If -f is specified, each name
refers to a shell function, and the function definition is removed. If the -n option is sup‐
plied, and name is a variable with the nameref attribute, name will be unset rather than the
variable it references. -n has no effect if the -f option is supplied. Read-only variables
and functions may not be unset. When variables or functions are removed, they are also re‐
moved from the environment passed to subsequent commands. If no options are supplied, each
name refers to a variable; if there is no variable by that name, a function with that name, if
any, is unset. Some shell variables may not be unset. If any of BASH_ALIASES, BASH_ARGV0,
BASH_CMDS, BASH_COMMAND, BASH_SUBSHELL, BASHPID, COMP_WORDBREAKS, DIRSTACK, EPOCHREALTIME,
EPOCHSECONDS, FUNCNAME, GROUPS, HISTCMD, LINENO, RANDOM, SECONDS, or SRANDOM are unset, they
lose their special properties, even if they are subsequently reset. The exit status is true
unless a name is readonly or may not be unset.

wait [-fn] [-p varname] [id ...]
Wait for each specified child process id and return the termination status of the last id.
Each id may be a process ID pid or a job specification jobspec; if a jobspec is supplied, wait
waits for all processes in the job.

If no options or ids are supplied, wait waits for all running background jobs and the last-ex‐
ecuted process substitution, if its process id is the same as $!, and the return status is
zero.

If the -n option is supplied, wait waits for any one of the given ids or, if no ids are sup‐
plied, any job or process substitution, to complete and returns its exit status. If none of
the supplied ids is a child of the shell, or if no ids are supplied and the shell has no un‐
waited-for children, the exit status is 127.

If the -p option is supplied, wait assigns the process or job identifier of the job for which
the exit status is returned to the variable varname named by the option argument. The vari‐
able, which cannot be readonly, will be unset initially, before any assignment. This is use‐
ful only when used with the -n option.

Supplying the -f option, when job control is enabled, forces wait to wait for each id to ter‐
minate before returning its status, instead of returning when it changes status.

If none of the ids specify one of the shell's active child processes, the return status is
127. If wait is interrupted by a signal, any varname will remain unset, and the return status
will be greater than 128, as described under SIGNALS above. Otherwise, the return status is
the exit status of the last id.

SHELL COMPATIBILITY MODE
Bash-4.0 introduced the concept of a shell compatibility level, specified as a set of options to the
shopt builtin (compat31, compat32, compat40, compat41, and so on). There is only one current compat‐
ibility level — each option is mutually exclusive. The compatibility level is intended to allow
users to select behavior from previous versions that is incompatible with newer versions while they
migrate scripts to use current features and behavior. It's intended to be a temporary solution.

This section does not mention behavior that is standard for a particular version (e.g., setting com‐
pat32 means that quoting the right hand side of the regexp matching operator quotes special regexp
characters in the word, which is default behavior in bash-3.2 and subsequent versions).

If a user enables, say, compat32, it may affect the behavior of other compatibility levels up to and
including the current compatibility level. The idea is that each compatibility level controls behav‐
ior that changed in that version of bash, but that behavior may have been present in earlier ver‐
sions. For instance, the change to use locale-based comparisons with the [[ command came in
bash-4.1, and earlier versions used ASCII-based comparisons, so enabling compat32 will enable ASCII-
based comparisons as well. That granularity may not be sufficient for all uses, and as a result
users should employ compatibility levels carefully. Read the documentation for a particular feature
to find out the current behavior.

Bash-4.3 introduced a new shell variable: BASH_COMPAT. The value assigned to this variable (a deci‐
mal version number like 4.2, or an integer corresponding to the compatNN option, like 42) determines
the compatibility level.

Starting with bash-4.4, bash began deprecating older compatibility levels. Eventually, the options
will be removed in favor of BASH_COMPAT.

Bash-5.0 was the final version for which there was an individual shopt option for the previous ver‐
sion. BASH_COMPAT is the only mechanism to control the compatibility level in versions newer than
bash-5.0.

The following table describes the behavior changes controlled by each compatibility level setting.
The compatNN tag is used as shorthand for setting the compatibility level to NN using one of the fol‐
lowing mechanisms. For versions prior to bash-5.0, the compatibility level may be set using the cor‐
responding compatNN shopt option. For bash-4.3 and later versions, the BASH_COMPAT variable is pre‐
ferred, and it is required for bash-5.1 and later versions.

compat31
• Quoting the rhs of the [[ command's regexp matching operator (=~) has no special ef‐
fect.

compat32
• The < and > operators to the [[ command do not consider the current locale when compar‐
ing strings; they use ASCII ordering.

compat40
• The < and > operators to the [[ command do not consider the current locale when compar‐
ing strings; they use ASCII ordering. Bash versions prior to bash-4.1 use ASCII colla‐
tion and strcmp(3); bash-4.1 and later use the current locale's collation sequence and
strcoll(3).

compat41
• In posix mode, time may be followed by options and still be recognized as a reserved
word (this is POSIX interpretation 267).
• In posix mode, the parser requires that an even number of single quotes occur in the
word portion of a double-quoted parameter expansion and treats them specially, so that
characters within the single quotes are considered quoted (this is POSIX interpretation
221).

compat42
• The replacement string in double-quoted pattern substitution does not undergo quote re‐
moval, as it does in versions after bash-4.2.
• In posix mode, single quotes are considered special when expanding the word portion of
a double-quoted parameter expansion and can be used to quote a closing brace or other
special character (this is part of POSIX interpretation 221); in later versions, single
quotes are not special within double-quoted word expansions.

compat43
• Word expansion errors are considered non-fatal errors that cause the current command to
fail, even in posix mode (the default behavior is to make them fatal errors that cause
the shell to exit).
• When executing a shell function, the loop state (while/until/etc.) is not reset, so
break or continue in that function will break or continue loops in the calling context.
Bash-4.4 and later reset the loop state to prevent this.

compat44
• The shell sets up the values used by BASH_ARGV and BASH_ARGC so they can expand to the
shell's positional parameters even if extended debugging mode is not enabled.
• A subshell inherits loops from its parent context, so break or continue will cause the
subshell to exit. Bash-5.0 and later reset the loop state to prevent the exit
• Variable assignments preceding builtins like export and readonly that set attributes
continue to affect variables with the same name in the calling environment even if the
shell is not in posix mode.

compat50
• Bash-5.1 changed the way $RANDOM is generated to introduce slightly more randomness.
If the shell compatibility level is set to 50 or lower, it reverts to the method from
bash-5.0 and previous versions, so seeding the random number generator by assigning a
value to RANDOM will produce the same sequence as in bash-5.0.
• If the command hash table is empty, bash versions prior to bash-5.1 printed an informa‐
tional message to that effect, even when producing output that can be reused as input.
Bash-5.1 suppresses that message when the -l option is supplied.

compat51
• The unset builtin treats attempts to unset array subscripts @ and * differently depend‐
ing on whether the array is indexed or associative, and differently than in previous
versions.
• Arithmetic commands ( ((...)) ) and the expressions in an arithmetic for statement can
be expanded more than once.
• Expressions used as arguments to arithmetic operators in the [[ conditional command can
be expanded more than once.
• The expressions in substring parameter brace expansion can be expanded more than once.
• The expressions in the $((...)) word expansion can be expanded more than once.
• Arithmetic expressions used as indexed array subscripts can be expanded more than once.
• test -v, when given an argument of A[@], where A is an existing associative array, will
return true if the array has any set elements. Bash-5.2 will look for and report on a
key named @.
• The ${parameter[:]=value} word expansion will return value, before any variable-spe‐
cific transformations have been performed (e.g., converting to lowercase). Bash-5.2
will return the final value assigned to the variable.
• Parsing command substitutions will behave as if extended globbing (see the description
of the shopt builtin above) is enabled, so that parsing a command substitution contain‐
ing an extglob pattern (say, as part of a shell function) will not fail. This assumes
the intent is to enable extglob before the command is executed and word expansions are
performed. It will fail at word expansion time if extglob hasn't been enabled by the
time the command is executed.

compat52
• The test builtin uses its historical algorithm to parse parenthesized subexpressions
when given five or more arguments.
• If the -p or -P option is supplied to the bind builtin, bind treats any arguments re‐
maining after option processing as bindable command names, and displays any key se‐
quences bound to those commands, instead of treating the arguments as key sequences to
bind.

RESTRICTED SHELL
If bash is started with the name rbash, or the -r option is supplied at invocation, the shell becomes
restricted. A restricted shell is used to set up an environment more controlled than the standard
shell. It behaves identically to bash with the exception that the following are disallowed or not
performed:

• Changing directories with cd.

• Setting or unsetting the values of SHELL, PATH, HISTFILE, ENV, or BASH_ENV.

• Specifying command names containing /.

• Specifying a filename containing a / as an argument to the . builtin command.

• Using the -p option to the . builtin command to specify a search path.

• Specifying a filename containing a slash as an argument to the history builtin command.

• Specifying a filename containing a slash as an argument to the -p option to the hash builtin
command.

• Importing function definitions from the shell environment at startup.

• Parsing the values of BASHOPTS and SHELLOPTS from the shell environment at startup.

• Redirecting output using the >, >|, <>, >&, &>, and >> redirection operators.

• Using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another command.

• Adding or deleting builtin commands with the -f and -d options to the enable builtin command.

• Using the enable builtin command to enable disabled shell builtins.

• Specifying the -p option to the command builtin command.

• Turning off restricted mode with set +r or shopt -u restricted_shell.

These restrictions are enforced after any startup files are read.

When a command that is found to be a shell script is executed (see COMMAND EXECUTION above), rbash
turns off any restrictions in the shell spawned to execute the script.

SEE ALSO
Bash Reference Manual, Brian Fox and Chet Ramey
The Gnu Readline Library, Brian Fox and Chet Ramey
The Gnu History Library, Brian Fox and Chet Ramey
Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) Part 2: Shell and Utilities, IEEE —
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/
http://tiswww.case.edu/~chet/bash/POSIX — a description of posix mode
sh(1), ksh(1), csh(1)
emacs(1), vi(1)
readline(3)

FILES
/bin/bash
The bash executable
/etc/profile
The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells
/etc/bash.bashrc
The systemwide per-interactive-shell startup file
/etc/bash.bash.logout
The systemwide login shell cleanup file, executed when a login shell exits
~/.bash_profile
The personal initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.bashrc
The individual per-interactive-shell startup file
~/.bash_logout
The individual login shell cleanup file, executed when a login shell exits
~/.bash_history
The default value of HISTFILE, the file in which bash saves the command history
~/.inputrc
Individual readline initialization file

AUTHORS
Brian Fox, Free Software Foundation
bfox@gnu.org

Chet Ramey, Case Western Reserve University
chet.ramey@case.edu

BUG REPORTS
If you find a bug in bash, you should report it. But first, you should make sure that it really is a
bug, and that it appears in the latest version of bash. The latest version is always available from
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/ and http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/snapshot/bash-mas‐
ter.tar.gz.

Once you have determined that a bug actually exists, use the bashbug command to submit a bug report.
If you have a fix, you are encouraged to mail that as well! You may send suggestions and “philosoph‐
ical” bug reports to bug-bash@gnu.org or post them to the Usenet newsgroup gnu.bash.bug.

ALL bug reports should include:

The version number of bash
The hardware and operating system
The compiler used to compile
A description of the bug behavior
A short script or “recipe” which exercises the bug

bashbug inserts the first three items automatically into the template it provides for filing a bug
report.

Comments and bug reports concerning this manual page should be directed to chet.ramey@case.edu.

BUGS
It's too big and too slow.

There are some subtle differences between bash and traditional versions of sh, mostly because of the
POSIX specification.

Aliases are confusing in some uses.

Shell builtin commands and functions are not stoppable/restartable.

Compound commands and command lists of the form “a ; b ; c” are not handled gracefully when combined
with process suspension. When a process is stopped, the shell immediately executes the next command
in the list or breaks out of any existing loops. It suffices to enclose the command in parentheses
to force it into a subshell, which may be stopped as a unit, or to start the command in the back‐
ground and immediately bring it into the foreground.

Array variables may not (yet) be exported.

GNU Bash 5.3 2025 April 7 BASH(1)

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Manual: bash

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