There are many standard or common utilities that available on the system that are beyond the focus of an introductory seminar. Here are listed some common utilities and what they are used for. The name is linked to the appropriate man page.
Editors
emacs - A common and powerful text editor
vi - (VIsual editor) a common and ubiquitous text editor
Filters
find - Used to locate files and perform actions like print the exact location etc.
grep, egrep, fgrep - Used to search for strings in files
sort - Sort the input based on fields and supports various parameters
uniq - Filter to remove similar lines from input and output unique lines.
File Utilities
diff and diff3 - differentiate between two and three text files
compress - compresses a file (usually tar files) to conserve disk space. This results in a file with a .Z extension
cmp - (Compare) compares files, works with binary files.
gzip and gunzip - Alternatives to compress. Generally result in better and more reliable compression. Recommended over compress.
ln - (Link) Used to create links to files (PC shortcuts, Mac Aliases)
sum - performs a checksum on a file. Used to check if a file has been damaged during file transfer.
tar - (Tape Archive) prepares an archive of a bunch of files. Generally results in a file with .tar extension.
uncompress - uncompresses a file compressed using compress
wc - (Word Count) count the number of words, lines and characters in a file
Misc Utilities
ph : Phonebook Client, used to look up phonebook information
pilot: File Browser like limited Windows File Manager
gcc : C Language compiler
g++ : C++ Langugae compiler
Printer Utilities
lpstat - Reports on the status of all active printers known to the system.
Shells
A shell is a user environment which can be used as a programming environment to write programs called shell scripts.
sh - (Bourne Shell) Oldest and ubiqutous shell
ksh - (Korn Shell) Like sh but more features. Popular and is the default on Icarus and Tigger
csh - (C Shell) A shell with C-language programming constructs.
tcsh - (exTended C Shell) Like the name says, it extends the C shell.
bash - (Bourne Again Shell) A variant of the ancient sh with many wonderful features. Common on Linux systems.
zsh - (Z shell) An alternative shell.
Text manipulation Utilities
awk - general purpose powerful utility for manipulating text files, has advanced math capabilities. Can be used as a programming tool.
perl - (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) powerful and highly useful general purpose programming language used for manipulation of text files. Used extensively in web programming.
sed - (Stream Editor) an editor that works like vi except on streams of text (as opposed to text files)
WWW / Internet Utilities
gopher - a text based gopher client
irc - an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client
lynx - text based web browser
pine - Program for Internet News and Email
talk and ytalk - a utility to talk to other UNIX users across the internet.
tin, trn,rn - Text based USENET news readers
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