On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.ubuntu, in article
<fijf0h$14d$1@nntp.fujitsu-siemens.com>, Josef Moellers wrote:
>Phil Buchman wrote:
>> I have spent this evening searching for a list of CLI commands in
>> Ubuntu(Gnome) Terminal. The problem that I have is that I get plenty
>> of lists and great tutorials and explanations---but I can't find a
>> *complete* list. For example, when I am in Terminal and type s tab
>> tab, I am asked: "Display all 148 possibilities? (y or n)" and I'm
>> not seeing 148 commands that begin with the letter S in any of the
>> command-lists that I've found online.
>As others have pointed out, a "complete list of Terminal commands"
>does not exist.
In practice - true. A lot depends on how you installed, and to a
lesser extent, who you are (root has access to more commands than
the average user - but individual users may have a ~/bin directory
with some number between zero and 'a lot' of commands therein only
usable by that individual user.
You could start with the 'Linux Standard Base' documents[1], or
perhaps POSIX -and maybe hit the 'Filesystem Hierarchy Standard' [2]
but you'd come up woefully short of "what's on _your_ system". I have
seen systems with over 5000 commands in the PATH.
>OTOH I doubt that any more than a very few people (if any) know each
>and every command available on their machine and use it appropriately.
>It's like wanting to know "a complete list of all words in a native
>language".
Excellent example. Some years ago, the 'Voice Of America' short wave
radio service started using "Simple English" in newscasts - allowing
people who had very limited skills with the language to hear the news.
"Simple English" used a vocabulary of just 900 words. But then, the
"American Herititage Dictionary of the English Language" (a 1" thick
paperback) has 55000 entries. If you really want to go to the extreme,
there is a BSD tarball of the "Webster's Second International" from
1934, which has 234936 words, and the tarball adds to that:
[compton ~]$ wc -l /usr/local/share/dict/[pw]*
1308 /usr/local/share/dict/propernames
235882 /usr/local/share/dict/web2
237190 total
[compton ~]$
>The main question is: what do you want this list for?
>A number of the programs available on your machine serve some very
>special purpose and might be of no use for you (e.g. if you do not do
>image processing, the pbm suite of programs is of no use to you, but
>might have been installed).
[compton ~]$ find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f | wc -l
1222
[compton ~]$ find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f -atime -90 | wc -l
361
[compton ~]$
So with a mere 1222 commands in my PATH on this workstation, only 361
have been accessed in the last 90 days.
[compton ~]$ ^90^365
find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f -atime -365 | wc -l
459
[compton ~]$
and 459 in the past _year_ (which seems high, but what can I say).
[compton ~]$ ^ati^mti
find `echo $PATH | tr ':' ' '` -type f -mtime -365 | wc -l
229
[compton ~]$
Oh, some of them _updated_ in the past year. Surprise, as that also
sets the 'atime'. Point is, you really don't use that many of the
available commands.
>Even after more than 25 years with Unix and Linux, I often learn about
>new commands and/or command options that make life a tad easier.
I absolutely agree. I'm often tripping over new stuff that way.
Old guy
[1]
http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/
[2]
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/