Talk:List of POSIX commands/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Untitled

203.109.254.51: You're right - this article needs to be thought through better. It is not acceptable for everyone to simply list her/his favourite software here, there should be some guidelines for what to include and what not. snoyes 16:13 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

Any suggestions?

The guideline is simply to list the programs for which a Wikipedia article is appropriate. -- Egil 18:52 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

I agree, the new name ("Unix commands") is not appropriate. Almost all of these items are not actually commands per se, but applications. Perhaps List of common Unix applications? -kwertii

I must admit to the word applications sending Pointy-Haired Boss signals down my spine, so my vote is for a plain List of Unix programs (where worthy of mention or significant goes into the article prologue). -- Egil 06:55 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

The new title "Unix commands" is completely wrong. For one thing, only a few of the items listed are commands per se. The previous title "List of popular Unix programs" was definitely better, although it would probably benefit from loosing the "popular". -- Egil 18:52 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

This is a mess it mix Unix commands and Unix software... Should be splitted ? Ericd 19:02 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)

The new title "Command (computing)" is even worse. The title should be used for an article which explains what the concept of a command is, in a computer context. This article is a list of things, and should contain "list of" in its title. Also, "list of computer commands" without setting a conext (such as Unix shell) is really, really, really pointless. I really see no purpose of this list in its present state at all. A list of notewhorthy and significant programs and systems is one thing, but this is now getting more and more3 like an "ls /bin /usr/bin /sbin". -- Egil 09:50 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, of course we need more context. No one should claim the current article is a good enough. I renamed it to List of Unix program (because there is a List of Unix programs so I can't rename to it right now.) The article will be renamed to "List of Unix programs" and a decent article sould be written to command (computing) article. -- Taku 12:58 Apr 24, 2003 (UTC)

I followed a couple of those links. Guess what the articles anubis and sleep are about :-/ -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 11:25 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It would be interesting indicate which of them are GNU.81.203.105.99

What's on First??

There are a few Internet sites that tell a humor story about Unix that talks about various commands, starting with "what" and continuing through various commands. Is there any place at Wikipedia for there to be links to a page that tells this story?? An example is http://www.salug.org/~pchapman/whats_on_first.html. 66.245.22.135 00:36, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm contemplating splitting this article into "List of Unix programs" and "List of Linux programs". The Unix version would retain most of its content, and the Linux version would contain applications not normally found on other versions of Unix, e.g. bash, emerge, dpkg, gcc. Otherwise, I will just make a subsection in the current article.

Thoughts?

Darrien 19:36, 2004 Apr 11 (UTC)

That'd be the list of GNU programmes. Linux is just a kernel, most of the other code was written by GNU (nope, not by Torvalds&co.). The list overlaps mostly anyway. That and gnu tools will run on all unixes. In the end you'll just run into a large amount of duplication. Kim Bruning 19:44, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have reorganised the article. I am unfamiliar with these utilities. They need reclassification.

I was also unsure of where to put these:

gettext - Message localization support
~~m4 - Macro language~~

Darrien 21:02, 2004 Apr 12 (UTC)

If we are going to move utilities like vi, tar, rm etc. out of "common utilities", then we need to eliminate the "common utilities" catagory entirely.

Also, to all editors of this article, please try to maintain the consistancy of this article by using "*[[" instead of "* [[".

Darrien 23:18, 2004 Apr 15 (UTC)

fink is not linux specific its OSX specific, I didnt start an OSX specific section?

date

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Is date really kernel specific? I would think it's available on just about every Unix variant in existence. --Shawn K. Quinn 01:20, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

what is a "unix program"

Latest comment: 17 years ago12 comments5 people in discussion

This list is becoming more of a "list of programs that can run on Unix" rather than a list of proper Unix programs. I think we should clean up and keep only programs that historically have been part of most unix environments and follow it's tradition.

It's a standard nowadays: I suggest starting from POSIX 1003.1 Comte0 03:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The page currently reads like a 'list of stuff I found on my Linux box.' I would recommend listing everything in POSIX / SUS, and indicating where they came from (e.g. System V, BSD). Oh and info it not a GNU/Linux alternative to man, it is a GNU alternative to man. It is part of the GNU project, and has no connection to Linux other than running on Linux (as well as *BSD, Solaris, OS X, etc). Linking to the Linux page when talking about it is just plain nonsense. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by David Chisnall (talk • contribs) 01:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC).

I disagree that programs should be removed from the page, unless they really do not run under Unix. If anything, List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 is not comprehensive enough. The page is a handy reference for looking up Unix program names which often make poor search keywords due to being very short, or having other meanings (e.g., cat, find, echo). The specific article title that Wikipedia uses for a given program may be hard to guess, as various articles use different methods of disambiguation in their titles (see the list in Category:Unix software and note the unpredictable variation of parenthesized qualifiers after the program names).

A page with a comprehensive list of programs that run on Unix, grouped by function, is often better than the online help which comes with Unix. The man command is great when I know the name of a program, but if all I remember is the general function of a program rather than its name, I can find it faster here. This page is useful in its current form; before changing it into something else, we should obtain some usage statistics for the page. Maybe other people find the page handy for looking up "improper" Unix programs.

If "proper" Unix programs need to be distinguished from "improper" programs (whatever that means), there are some nondestructive ways to do that:

Add a section List of POSIX commands/Archive 1#Proper Unix programs and list the proper ones there, or add a whole new page: List of proper Unix programs, List of POSIX programs, etc.
Start a new category: Category:Proper Unix programs and categorize all the "proper" Unix programs accordingly.
Convert the program lists on List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 into one or more tables, with columns to indicate "properness," "origin," or whatever else seems important.
- Using sortable tables will allow purists to sort the programs by "properness" if they wish, while still allowing those who don't care about "properness" to look up information about programs on their Linux box.

--Teratornis 20:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

A list of all UNIX programs will be huge.

Yes, and so? The list is not going to contain all Unix programs any time soon, because editors are only adding the programs they have found interesting enough to add. See Pareto rule and 10/90 gap. Something like 10% of the commands or features in a typical system get 90% of the use. The list is probably valuable because it represents the product of some intelligent human filtering. Odds are that the programs people have added to the list are the programs readers need to look up. See WP:SS for the procedure to follow for splitting large pages as they grow; this is a natural aspect of Wikipedia. --Teratornis 02:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

There are over 6000 distributed for NetBSD alone, and this is not including proprietary software, or software that doesn't run on NetBSD. Currently, this page is woefully inadequate as a list of all programs that run on UNIX, and misleading as a list of all programs required to be present on a UNIX® or POSIX system.

The latter two problems are easy to address with a small disclaimer section added to the list, in the unlikely event that anyone would make either mistake in interpretation. Who exactly would read the page and imagine these are all the programs that run on Unix, or imagine these are all the programs required to be present on a Unix or POSIX system? Most people who have spent much time on Wikipedia would know the "list of" articles don't normally claim to be exhaustive (for example, List of wiki software does not imply that if something is not on the list, it cannot be wiki software), and I think anyone who has heard of POSIX would know where to find information specific to it, and would know when they are looking at something else. The list is too long for most people to memorize quickly, and is not in a suitable format for turning into some sort of a specification list, so it's hard to imagine how someone would misuse the list content in the ways you mention. --Teratornis 02:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

If you can't find help about an application using man, I suggest you learn how to use apropos (or man -k). David Chisnall 00:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The output of man is inefficient for note-taking. Perhaps few Unix users are sufficiently literate to keep notes about their work, but I do. I prefer to look up documentation on a Web site with stable URLs, so I can cite them in my notes, send them in e-mail to others, etc. Now that I am taking notes on wikis, I can link to Wikipedia articles with interwiki links. Thus the List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 is a valuable resource for note-taking. When I find a command entry there, I have the reference I can cite, without having to do a secondary lookup as is necessary if I find the command first with man. Then when I read my notes again in a year or two, after I have done thousands of other tasks, I can refresh my memory quickly about any seldom-used commands. Keeping notes has taught me how much I forget; sometimes I look at my notes from just a few months ago, and they seem to have been written by someone else. Someone whose work is more repetitive, or who forms long-term memories more quickly, might not have the same difficulty. But everybody I work with seems just as forgetful.

I'd guess Bill Gates loves man -k, as well as your belief it should suffice — those factors are a small part of why Windows continues to dominate the desktop, and Gates remains the world's richest man. I've used man -k enough to know it is an ergonomic throwback for many people without the luxury to think about Unix full-time. Humans designed computers because human brains can only recall a limited number of details, especially in areas of knowledge they access only occasionally. The primitive keyword retrieval mechanism of man -k was already obsolete in the 1980's, when the help system should have provided regular-expression search on the full text of all man pages, with options to prune the search by categories. Then by the 1990s everybody got to see what hypertext is like, and now it's hard to take that step backwards. Bill Gates knows this; do you want him to keep getting richer? Unix has never put a significant dent in the desktop market, in part because its traditional help system makes learning Unix unnecessarily difficult. --Teratornis 02:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree, the current list looks ridiculous and laughable to anyone that has ever used a real Unix system. --Uriel 10:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Most people have not used a Unix system, real or otherwise, and probably would not understand your sense of humor. Wikipedia, unlike Unix, is easy for ordinary people to use. Thus we can expect many ordinary people will see the list. In any case, what exactly makes you laugh at the list? I find it to be a valuable tool for finding information about Unix commands I am likely to use, as well as recording my findings; and as the list naturally grows more comprehensive, it will become more useful still. How do you use the list? If there is a type of list you would find more useful, then by all means let's create it in addition to this list (or make this list into what you want, and start another list which you can laugh at or ignore). There's plenty of room here for everyone. I assume you use the list for something, because otherwise why would you look at it? --Teratornis 02:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree, this list is way to extensive, the FreeBSD Ports collection currently has about 14.000 ports, do you really want to include them all...?

The list should contain:

Programs specified in POSIX
Programs included in GNU coreutils
Programs included in *BSD base

This should cover 99% of the standard utilities you find on unix-like systems (solaris, hp-ux, linux, minix, ect)

Another option is to split the page in two, something like 'list of standard unix console commands' and 'list of common unix applications' Carpetsmoker 03:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

What about the list of programs in Unix 10th Edition? I don't think one can take GNU coreutils as a reference of what is a 'unix program', but this are minnor points compared with the ridiculous list of totally non-unix-related junk we have now. --Uriel 13:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that unix means "unix-like" in this context, I know that "GNU's not UNIX", but in general linux (or to be more specific: GNU/Linux) is considered to be a "unix-like" OS.

Since it's also the most popular unix-like OS around, I think including coreutils would be appropriate...

If you only want "true" unix programs here, then this would be the output of ls /bin from a SCO system....

I agree that it's a minor issue to this list(opera?,php?,openoffice?, ect.) most of the POSIX programs don't have proper pages yet, those should be done first, worry about the exact definition of "unix tools" later. Carpetsmoker 16:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

sudo

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I was going to add sudo, but I could not think of a good decription. I believe that the definition for su should be changed in order to compensate for sudo. The difference (for non-Unix users) is that when you use su, the shell is put into root mode and stays that way until you do either the "exit" command or quit out. for sudo, it executes the command, and goes back to the original shell with the original user. sudo is used alot in Debian based distributions

Sudo has a more important feature. After all, the "one command" that you sudo can be a shell. The more important feature is that it allows trusted users to become root without knowing the root password. If user "fred" is given access to sudo, then the only password he needs to know to get root access is his own. --Serge 23:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I have added: "sudo – execute a command as a different user (usually root)"; a more precise explanation is in the sudo article. Change this line if you don't like it. - Liberatore(T) 16:16, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

tree - which Unix version does it come with?

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I tried the 'tree' command on 4 flavors of Unix - Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and Linux, and it was not available on any. I think tree is a Windows (or DOS) command that was ported to Unix. As a long-time Unix Admin, I always use the du command to see the directory structure, which also includes the size of each directory.

tree – Print a depth-indented tree of a given directory

Any objections to removing this entry? Gbeeker 21:31, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

From gentoo portage:

*  app-text/tree
     Latest version available: 1.5.0
     Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
     Size of downloaded files: 25 kB
     Homepage:    http://mama.indstate.edu/users/ice/tree/
     Description: Lists directories recursively, and produces an indented listing of files.
     License:     GPL-2

-- Kim Bruning 23:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Just installed it. Quite handy actually. I'll keep it :-) Kim Bruning 23:26, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, tree never was a Unix command, one of the many pieces of random garbage in this list --Uriel 17:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

link backs to this page

Latest comment: 18 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

This page would receive a lot more traffic and be more useful if more of the unix programs had links back to this page. At the moment very few of them do. Kevinydianita 22:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

That is a Great Idea - I have started adding the See also section (see below) to the unix programs listed on this page. It's easy to copy the text and paste it right above the External links section, if there is one, or to paste the text at the end of the page if there isn't an External links section. I've already added the link on each program in the General user section. --Unixguy 12:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I've added the link to this page for all the commands up to Archivers_and_compression. --Unixguy 07:50, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
I am up to the Other_text_processing_commands section now. --Unixguy 19:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Now, rather than adding a link in the See Also section, I am adding the Unix programs listed on this page to the category Category:Unix software
I am up to the Compilers and Programming tools sections with adding the Category:Unix software --Unixguy 19:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

This page might be useful, but how does it pass WP:NOT#DIR and WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE? Wouldn't this make more sense at Wiktionary? -- Butseriouslyfolks 02:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I find this list very useful. It should be noted that this list is extremely linkspam free which is amazing when you compare it to the many other software lists on Wikipedia. Also surprising is that each entry also has a brief informative description which again is rare for a wiki software list. If you want to clean up the wiki lists I suggest you be discriminate and go after the some of the other software lists that are in desperate need of help. (Requestion 15:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC))

Some lists appear to have obtained featured status. While List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 is not as good yet as, say, List of dinosaurs, if a list of dinosaurs is OK, why wouldn't a list of obviously related computer programs be OK? As far as I can see, List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 passes WP:NOT#DIR and WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE because a list of related computer programs is not an example of any of the the forbidden classes of things in those sections. However, mine is not an expert opinion. Actually, since those sections give examples of disallowed lists, a better way to object to List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 would be to point out which type of disallowed list you think List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 is an instance of. If List of POSIX commands/Archive 1 has to go, a whole bunch of eminently useful "list of" articles would have to go. Speaking of useful, those "list of" articles are some of the most useful articles on Wikipedia, as far as I am concerned. In software particularly, one often hears of some (commercial) package, and one wants to know what open source alternatives there are. Or the package one has might not do everything one wants, and the search for similar packages is on. One well-written "list of" article spares potentially many people from grueling sessions of Google search. --Teratornis 02:53, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I just removed the remaining three programs with external links. So this is now a list of 100+ Unix programs that have a Wikipedia article. That is an impressive statement to the encyclopedic nature of this fine list. Someone should go through the External Links section and prune that down a bit. (Requestion 16:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC))

shutdown

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

where is the shutdown command, I know many single computer users usually have a shutdown button on the screen, however it is still a very useful command. I use it to restart and shutdown the machine from a remote terminal. It is a nice command prompt tool to have. Just suggesting it be added, it is an original AIX command as well not just linux specific. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.198.138.5 (talk) 00:02, 2 March 2007 (UTC).

 I agree shutdown should be part of this list.

added. --Unixguy 16:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup notice

Latest comment: 16 years ago14 comments2 people in discussion

This list badly needs a cleanup, most people seemed to agree on this in the "What is a unix program" thread above. Unless allot of people will object, I will strip this list down to the utilities specified in SUS (IEEE Std 1003.1) in a week orso, if you want to contribute to wikipedia them please write a good article for those programs that don't have one already, because many don't. Discussion on which other common unix utilities should be here (such as tar) should take place after that.

You can view the list of utilities specified in SUS here: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/

Carpetsmoker 06:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this list is a bit large and that it will never be 100% comprehensive. Maybe this list is too ambitious? Maybe it should be broken up into sub-groups? What is nice about this list from a Wikipedia perspective is that each entry has a brief description, it is 100% internal links, and there are very few red links. As far as lists of software go on Wikipedia this list is one of the best so I am reluctant to hack it all up. (Requestion 19:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC))

It is one of the largest lists, not the best, a list should list something specific, not something vague like "unix program", the first discussion would be on what "unix" actually is, the second would be on what a "unix program" exactly is (for example, are applications like opera, or unreal tournament unix programs?) and the third would be how large the list should be (For example, the FreeBSD ports collections contains 16.000 ports, do you really want to have a list of that on wikipedia...?)

There are allot of other related lists:

And many, many more, in my opinion we should just put link to those lists because:

It will be easier for readers to quickly find and compare applications
It will be easier for editors to maintain the lists

Take a look at List_of_DOS_commands, do you see programs like norton commander, or ehm ... actually norton commander is only DOS program I can remember :/ .. but you get my point...

Furthermore, this list should be renamed to list of unix commands (commands currently redirects to programs, it should be the other way around), it is less vague and more appropriate

Carpetsmoker 00:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

If it runs on Unix then it is a Unix program, so yes, Unreal and Opera would be Unix programs. This list is big and maybe it should be deleted? But trying to repurpose it, change it's definition and charter is not the right solution. Why rename it? If you really want a List of Unix utilities then create it. It's simple to do and no one is stopping you. Heck, I'll even support you. (Requestion 03:53, 3 March 2007 (UTC))

Creating a new list and deleting this one is fine by me. Anyway, no one else has responded, can I assume no one has any objections? Carpetsmoker 00:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

~~You know that is not what I suggested.~~ (Requestion 01:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC))

Hmmm, maybe that is what I suggested. Now I might go for this if all the programs on this list are added to the Category:Unix software. Categories are better for this sort of thing and they are spam-proof. Then the worry is if a free software enthusiast gets the category deleted like they did with Category_talk:Linux_software. It is just a shame to see a link spam free list such as this one get deleted. (Requestion 02:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC))

Preview of the new list: User:Carpetsmoker, The category's need to be filled in. Any comments would be welcome. Carpetsmoker 20:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

That looks very nice. Instead of "EMPTY" which is really big it might be better to leave the cell blank. I know all Unix's don't have all of these commands, so it might be really interesting to have a column that mentions which do or when/where the command originated. What do you plan on calling your new list? Something like List of Unix utilities? I'm also curious how well it matches SUS (IEEE Std 1003.1)? (Requestion 20:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC))

Yeah, I was thinking about List of Unix utilities to.

EMPTY is usefull because I can search for that in vim, and see which utilities aren't in a category yet. they'll get replace with something usefull before the page is published.

I was thinking about adding where/when the commands originated, the German version of this page does that, but I wanted to fill in all the category's first (I can always add another row with a script later) Carpetsmoker 20:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

You mean how well "my" list matches again SUS? It's a perfect match, I got the list from the SUS page Carpetsmoker 20:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Well you definitely should mention SUS somewhere in the description. Next: add an external link to the opengroup.org, add a couple cats, and you are good to go. (Requestion 21:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC))

Took a while, but the page is up, List of Unix programs redirects to this page, links need to be fixed Carpetsmoker 03:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Now I do like your like your idea of having a list of SUS (IEEE Std 1003.1) utilites. I propose creating a List of Unix utilities or SUS (IEEE Std 1003.1) or something similar. (Requestion 19:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC))

Delete or rename

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This article is not encyclopedic. Rename it or delete it. As noted above, listing thousands of Unix programs is pointless from a wikipedia point of view. Regarding the comparison to List of dinosaurs, Dinosaurs are extinct so the list is relatively stable. Also there weren't ten's of thousands of genre's of dinosaurs. Perhaps a list of lists or categories is appropriate or limiting the scope to system software. Daniel.Cardenas 22:09, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

apropos?

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.218.26.113 (talk) 06:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

apropis is not IEEE Std 1003.1-2004 Carpetsmoker (talk) 04:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Please make dynamic

Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This page must be dynamic with Template talk:Unix commands. JackPotte (talk) 15:30, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Comprehensive or limited list?

Latest comment: 14 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

This is a peculiar article. Is it supposed to be comprehensive UNIX/Linux? Should lspci be added, for example? Or is it supposed to be limited forever to whatever is in IEEE Std 1003.1-2004? -71.174.186.200 (talk) 14:47, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Per topic description, it's not a list of GNU utilities Tedickey (talk) 21:31, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Just IEEE Std 1003.1-2004, look at the archives (This was discussed earlier). 83.161.253.7 (talk) 18:20, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

dc (computer program)

Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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

which-able vs. non-which-able

Latest comment: 12 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

For some of these commands, one can type which, e.g.

$ which ls
/bin/ls
$ which which
/usr/bin/which

But for others, there is no output:

$ which alias
$ which source
$ which export
$

I'm guessing that there is a difference:

which-able: executables
non-which-able: keywords/functionality in shell

Could somebody comment on this?

E.g. is this the same for all bash shells then, or does it depend?

Also, I haven't yet found a non-which-able command, which had a manual entry.

213.165.179.229 (talk) 11:37, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Originally "which" was a C shell script, which could not be relied upon to list aliases in a Bourne shell implementation. Being a script, it was also unable to list aliases defined after the C shell's initialization. Korn shell defined "type", which is the same idea, but is a built-in (so it solves in effect the latter problem). (I recall running into "which" being integrated in a nominal Bourne shell, but cannot recall which one - ignoring implementations on Windows, which tend to be hybrids). TEDickey (talk) 20:21, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

In older BSD unix, "which" was a hard link to "whereis". As mentioned above, it was a separate program, therefore not part of the shell, so it could not do some of the "type" things; in fact, it can't do the things that type does near the beginning of its search sequence. It also does not look along the PATH. It was, therefore, arguably far less useful than "type". One of the very few command-line things that AT&T does better than BSD :) Old_Wombat (talk) 05:13, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Spell??

Latest comment: 12 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

I wrote a (fairly informative) stub for the missing spell (Unix) article, and added a link to it to the list on this article. Somebody reverted by addition, saying "rv - not topical, per description". I have no idea what he meant. The link to the spell utility is definitely missing here, and *should* be added. Spell has been part of Unix since 1975, and is listed on SUS, and is *definitely* an official Unix utility. I'm not here to pick fights, so I won't try to add it again, but please reconsider. Nyh (talk) 12:46, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Generally "legacy" in this context suggests that someone would like to withdraw the item, noting that it is of limited usefulness in current environments. Perhaps adding a column to the table to reflect this attribute would improve the topic. TEDickey (talk) 12:49, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

While I was frank about the obsolescence of spell in spell (Unix), it doesn't mean it no longer exists. It does exist, and even my very recent installation of Fedora 15 includes a "spell" command which does what the original "spell" tool did (although it is implemented using aspell, not McIlroy's original code). Moreover, as far as I know, in Unix (in contrast with Linux distributions), "spell" has never been superseded by anything else - as far as I remember, "ispell" (let alone its successors) was never a part of commercial Unix. Again, I'm not trying to claim that "spell" is a great and useful application. It is just as archaic as "od" or "asa" or "compress" or "delta" (wow, I haven't used SCCS in almost 20 years), or "ed" (25 years ago, I knew the last person who actually used this editor ;-)), or (yikes!) "uucp". But why keep all that crap on the list, and leave out just "spell"? Nyh (talk) 13:07, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

The given source would identify the "legacy" items. There might also be a WP:RS which collects that information (after all, Wikipedia is not a repository of knowledge) TEDickey (talk) 13:47, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Standards must be upheld

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The reason for the column "First appeared" is to uphold the notability standard. — Cpiral Cpiral 18:18, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Wot about "mknod"?

Latest comment: 11 years ago20 comments5 people in discussion

Since you have "mkfifo", you should also have "mknod", which (at least in the AT&T world) includes the mkfifo capability. Old_Wombat (talk) 05:14, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

mknod isn't in the X/Open list TEDickey (talk) 12:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, fine, then in an X/Open environment how do you create b/c special files? (I'm an AT&T guy). Old_Wombat (talk) 09:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you're making this article into a "List of Posix Utilities", while its name is "List of Unix Utilities". Posix is not Unix - Posix is a set of APIs - C functions and shell utilities - which can be used to write applications which will work across many variants of Unix and even other systems (e.g., Windows with Cygwin). Posix deliberately does not cover parts of Unix which user applications do not use, and "mknod" is such an example - an ordinary application needs to assume that devices exists, and not care on how they were created. So Posix doesn't mandate an "mknod" command, and Cygwin for example doesn't have to support mknod (by the way - it does have it...)). But saying that this means that "mknod" isn't a Unix utility is silly. The mknod utility appeared in Unix v6 (in 1975), and all Unix variants inherited it. Nyh (talk) 13:14, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The topic description points to the relevant sources which happen to be POSIX, and extends that to similar systems:

This is a list of UNIX utilities as specified by IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, which is part of the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). These utilities can be found on UNIX Operating systems and most UNIX-like operating systems.

If a given utility isn't in that source, some (non-WP:OR) sources should be given to reduce argument. So far, most of the outliers have been the usual cases of (a) little-used applications, (b) Linux-specific, or (c) developers promoting their products. TEDickey (talk) 11:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more inappropriate POSIX is as a "List of Unix Utilities". I just found on the list the silly "command", which as far as I know was never a Unix utility (it is a builtin in new shells, but I don't remember it existing on Unix at all), and on the other hand we're missing the oportuinity to link to real articles on real Unix utilities that have existed for more than 3 decades, like "mknod" and "Spell (Unix)", just because Posix didn't standardize them or thought they were legacy. I would argue that this page should be renamed "List of Posix Utilities" (or something similar), and it should be linked in the Posix article. Then, a separate "List of Unix Utilities" can be created, perhaps as a union of utilities that existed on a small number of "classic" Unix systems for whom we can find manuals, e.g., 7th edition, System V, SunOS, 4.4BSD etc. This will have to be well defined, to avoid making it a list of X-windows programs, a list of hundreds of utilities from modern Linux or BSD variants, etc, but it will be a more exhaustive list of utilities that actually existed on Unix systems. Nyh (talk) 13:39, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

However, the topic description and sources don't say "POSIX". It being Wikipedia, you're free to make up whatever facts you want, but ultimately if they're not WP:RS, and veer into WP:OR, someone will disagree with your opinion TEDickey (talk) 13:55, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

This argument is becoming a little absurd. The lede talks about "Single UNIX Specification (SUS)". It then immediately moves to "UNIX Operating systems" (plural) and then "most UNIX-like operating systems" (again a plural). If that wasn't enough, Tedickey immediately talks about "X/Open"; and then somehow "Posix" makes its way into the conversation. If there's no agreement on even that, it seems pointless to continue the discussion. Finally, Tedickey, as to your "(a) little-used applications, (b) Linux-specific, or (c) developers promoting their products. ", categories, into which of those are you going to fit mknod? Old_Wombat (talk) 09:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably the first, on the basis of which I'd recommend trimming the topic to mention only those programs which have (a) WP:RS citing their origin and/or (b) a topic demonstrating their respective notability TEDickey (talk) 11:53, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

How on earth do you figure that mknod is an application? Old_Wombat (talk) 07:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you making a distinction between "utility" and "application"? In either case, it's documented as if it is a program in the user-space TEDickey (talk) 11:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

To add to the above discussion, it is completely absurd that "bg", "fg", "alias", "unalias" are listed in a "List of Unix utilities". They are definitely NOT "Unix Utilities", but rather shell builtins, and have never existed in any other form. This article should be perhaps be renamed "List of SUS utilities", or something, but not a "List of Unix Utilities". A real "List of Unix utilities" would not have these non-utilities, but *will* have real Unix utilities like seq (Unix), factor (Unix), spell (Unix), mknod and other stuff that exist on most (if not all) variants of Unix, BSD and Linux, but missing from SUS for one reason or another. Nyh (talk) 10:49, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

From the context and earlier comments, it appears that you're arguing for making "Unix" whatever happens to run on the various *BSDs, (even Linux...) etc., and separating the trademark owner from its trademark, since it is not relevant to your proposed consensus TEDickey (talk) 11:00, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

You're mistunderstanding me. The reason I want these articles (seq, factor, spell, mknod, crypt) on this list isn't that it runs on *BSD and Linux - it's that they existed in the official products called Unix. Factor (Unix) for example existed on every official version of Unix since 1974, and the fact that SUS decided it wasn't important enough doesn't mean it should be wiped out from Unix history. The fact that these utilities still exist on modern Linux and *BSD systems doesn't say much if they are Unix - just that they are still considered useful even today, despite what Posix thought. Contrast this, for example, with Little Implementation Language, a short-lived Unix utility (compiler, actually), which existed only in Fifth Edition Unix (in 1974) but was dropped afterward and never reached any other Unix version or BSD or Linux. Such utiltities can, I think, be dropped, but the more long-lasting ones should not.Nyh (talk) 13:36, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

‎Today, someone added the good article crypt (Unix) to the "List of Unix Utilities", and someone else removed it saying that "crypt is not POSIX". I'm still bothered (very much) that very useful Unix utilities which have existed for years (even decades) before Posix, are now labeled "not unix" because Posix decided to leave them out. I remember using "crypt" (as well as "spell", "mknod" and other things left out from this list) on Unix since 1985. This list needs to be split: a new "List of Posix Utilities" (with the current rules moved to that article) and "List of Unix Utilities" which will include utilities (commands from the (1), (6) or (8) section of the manual pages) which existed on *UNIX* releases (mostly AT&T releases, and perhaps other things, but definitely not modern Linux and *BSD distributions).Nyh (talk) 13:28, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Crypt was available on all older UNIX system and BSD but since the early 1980s, the US export regulations caused it to disappear - well it was a simplified variant of the German Enigma from the 1920s to 1940s. The article name indeed has a problem as it does not fully aggree with the explanation for the article. --Schily (talk) 22:00, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

crypt was not available on "all" Unix systems, and of course anything called "crypt" on most Linux/BSD systems is quite likely a separate implementation. It never was standardized, as you seem to concede, and the current topic is based on the programs that were standardized. TEDickey (talk) 21:29, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Today another fine, traditional Unix utility was banned from the list: fortune (Unix), again proving that this list must not be called "List of Unix utilies" list. Nyh (talk) 19:01, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

The current lawful truth is that UNIX is what POSIX defines. As you might discover, fortune is not part of the POSIX standard. --Schily (talk) 09:56, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

POSIX is not an exclusionary definition. In other words, there is no such thing as POSIX Unix that is only POSIX Unix. The first paragraph of the POSIX article explains that the POSIX standard is meant to ensure a minimum level of compatibility between different variants of Unix. So, the scope of this article should not be narrowed to only POSIX, because that would exceed the scope of POSIX itself as it relates to Unix. If there isn't a list of POSIX utilities already, there probably should be one. That would be the right place to narrow the scope to only POSIX utilities. Badon (talk) 19:39, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Removed links

Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I'm collecting here links to actual Unix utilities (utilities which existed in various versions of Unix) which various people added to this list, but were removed by others because they were never standardized by POSIX or SUS. This list could be useful if one day someone will be bold and split this list into a POSIX list and a Unix list:

Nyh (talk) 13:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

You did not sign your text and BTW: seq did not exist in any version of UNIX I am aware of. It seems that it has ben introduced by Plan 9. --Schily (talk) 19:41, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I've retroactively signed it now. seq was introduced in Eighth Edition Unix, which while wasn't a very well known Unix (because it came out in 1985, after the BSDs and commercial Unix split from research Unix), was nevertheless "Unix" par excellence. While not a proof, the fact that both GNU and freebsd decided to copy/emulate this utility shows that at least they considered this a viable, useful (at least at the time) Unix utility. What I'm trying to say (multiple times in this thread... sorry...) is that Unix isn't a single coherent system, and not even a single standard, but rather a bushy family tree of systems developed over 3 decades, and some "list of unix utilities" (even if not this article) should list all the various utilities which were popular over these years. I'm not saying that every useless utility that existed for a brief period (e.g., Little Implementation Language) must be listed (although I'm not sure it shouldn't), but definitely a utility like seq which existed in Bell Labs Unix for 7 years (from 8th edition in 1985, until Unix development stopped around 1992) and was copied by some modern Unix-like systems (GNU and FreeBSD), is worthy listing.Nyh (talk) 13:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: 3 needed list articles

Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

This article should be renamed to List of Unix utilities and shell builtins.
Create another article named List of Single Unix Specification utilities.
Create another article named List of POSIX utilities.

Badon (talk) 19:45, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

UNIX is a Trademark owned by The OpenGroup - the creator of the Single UNIX specification. The Single UNIX specification and POSIX have merged after 2001 (POSIX just adopts the SUS specifications after a review), so there does not seem to be a difference between all three. --Schily (talk) 20:59, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

This is a non-sequitur - so what if Unix is a trademark? According to this logic, List of Unix systems should only list one system, the current SUS standard. Obviously, it doesn't. Remember that the trademark "UNIX" was used for about 3 decades for a number of systems, which have nothing to do with the current SUS standard. All these UNIX systems had utilities, which while were not later adopted by SUS, some have been "UNIX utilities" for 20 (or whatever) years, and writing them out of history (or just the "list of Unix Utilities") makes little sense to me. See my list above of several. To the original proposer - please note this this article should be renamed not "list of unix utilities and shell builtins" but rather "list of sus utilities and shell builtins". A new "list of unix utilities" article should contain a slightly different list (see my "removed" list in an above section), and should not list shell builtins, which are a completely different beast. Nyh (talk) 13:07, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

The first two suggestions fall flat for the same reason that you want to rename the topic. The third for a similar reason: the topic description isn't specifically "POSIX" without some creative misuse of sources. TEDickey (talk) 20:30, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

yacc appeared earlier

Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

yacc didn't first appear in pwb, it goes back to at least unix version 3, and perhaps even earlier. tuhs lists the date 1/20/73. Perhaps this should be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cube1024 (talk • contribs) 06:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

using a reliable source is the way to proceed. TEDickey (talk) 10:02, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Wrong name for page

Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

This page is restricted to utilities defined in SUS standard, but (by name of the page) the page is about (all) Unix utilities. The name of the page should be changed or the list should be expanded to non-SUS mentioned utilities (for example free). There is no reason to think (or predict) that SUS has whole set and no other utilities are usable (or exist) anr/or that SUS standard defines what is possible/allowed to list (or deny to list) in Wikipedia. --Milan Kerslager (talk) 08:21, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

perhaps you meant to say that it should be renamed "Linux utilities", since there's no other way to interpret your remarks. TEDickey (talk) 09:18, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

No, it should be named "Unix SUS utilities" or something like this if the page want to restrict the set of utilities to SUS only. If the name "List of Unix utilities" is used, there should be no restriction for the list because the name does not reflect any restriction. --Milan Kerslager (talk) 18:09, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

hmm - your remarks remind me of the people looking at [www.freebsd.org]] and wanting to know which Linux distribution that is. As it is, there's a note at the top of this topic which delineates what's expected. TEDickey (talk) 18:43, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

mkfifo

Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

I don't believe mkfifo appeared in 4.4BSD, as the article claims. That may be the first BSD that had it, but in his 1977 Unix retrospective, Dennis Ritchie already described named pipes. I'm pretty sure they were in System V, and since they weren't in Research Unix, I suspect they're from either CB UNIX or PWB. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 15:45, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

mkfifo has a Copyright 1984 AT&T inside. This does not prove y1984 as the first year but it proves that id did not appear later. The BSD implementation has been created in 1990 by Kirk McKusick. Schily (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Which mkfifo implementation is that?

According to the POSIX.2001 spec for mkfifo "[T]he mknod() function was originally excluded from the POSIX.1-1988 standard as implementation-defined and replaced by mkdir() and mkfifo()`." 4.4BSD was from 1993 or 94, so mkfifo is older; if I interpret this correctly, then mknod was originally used to create named pipes and mkfifo was invented by POSIX to prevent having to standardize mknod. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 18:53, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I am talking about the original UNIX implementation.

Even though we sometimes have historic discussions in the teleconferences, the Opengroup in general does not care about history in public documents if that history happened before 1988.

mkdir() was written by Bill Joy probably in late 1982. The related code was merged in by Samuel Leffer around that time with a hint to Bill. The final change of the mkdir command was on December 19 1982 by Samual Leffler.

Before, mkdir() did not exist, mkdir(1) was a suid root command based on mknod() and that was highly insecure. It took not a long time to become super user with a mkdir(1) based hardlink attack.

mknod() was excluded from POSIX because POSIX does not deal with device nodes if that is beyond the scope of stat(2).

IIRC, named pipes have been added to SunOS-3.0 (December 1985) they aperared extremely late in BSD and the UNIX FAQ that is not always correct (see false claims about SCCS vs. RCS performance) says that named pipes have been introduced by AT&T in 1982. Schily (talk) 21:09, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Utilities / commands, full list / sub-lists?

Latest comment: 9 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I arrived at this page after looking for a overall list of Unix commands and being redirected from List of Unix commands. Not being a Unix purist (whatever that is), I thought that there would be an article which listed as many of the commands as possible (i.e. any "word" that would do something at a command line). Since that would be a big list, I assumed that there would also be articles for more specific lists covering utilities vs. built-ins vs. utilities in ABC Unix vs. utilities in XYZ Unix standard. So, unless I missed a major point, please could we have a generic list at List of Unix commands and move this page to reflect the specific nature of commands included in this list. --GhostInTheMachine (talk) 13:54, 24 May 2014 (UTC)