"" - double quotes - gives the variable value

'' - single quotes - gives the value inside the quotes

`` - backtits/backquotes - execute the value of variable and returns the result
example
ABC = date
echo "$ABC" -- output : date
echo '$ABC' -- output : $ABC
echo `$ABC` -- output : 19 feb 2014 10:00 am ET

$0 The filename of the current script.

$n These variables correspond to the arguments with which a script was invoked.
Here n is a positive decimal number corresponding to the position of an argument
(the first argument is $1, the second argument is $2, and so on).
$# The number of arguments supplied to a script.
$* All the arguments are double quoted. If a script receives two arguments, $*
is equivalent to $1 $2.
$@ All the arguments are individually double quoted. If a script receives two
arguments, $@ is equivalent to $1 $2.
$? The exit status of the last command executed.
$$ The process number of the current shell. For shell scripts, this is the
process ID under which they are executing.
$! The process number of the last background command.

grep [option] search_word path

-i - for case sensitive
-c -- to get count
-v -- get the results inversely- means retuns o/p lines which don't contact the
search_word

find path search_word what_to_do

nohup command & - used to run the command in background without hangups
command & -- used to run the command in background in Linux - if we use & or bg and
if we loged out from session then that process will be killed

How to display the 10th line of a file?

head -10 filename | tail -1
2. How to remove the header from a file?
sed -i '1 d' filename
3. How to remove the footer from a file?
sed -i '$ d' filename
4. Write a command to find the length of a line in a file?
The below command can be used to get a line from a file.
sed �n '<n> p' filename
We will see how to find the length of 10th line in a file
sed -n '10 p' filename|wc -c
5. How to get the nth word of a line in Unix?
cut �f<n> -d' '
6. How to reverse a string in unix?
echo "java" | rev
7. How to get the last word from a line in Unix file?
echo "unix is good" | rev | cut -f1 -d' ' | rev
8. How to replace the n-th line in a file with a new line in Unix?
sed -i'' '10 d' filename # d stands for delete
sed -i'' '10 i new inserted line' filename # i stands for insert
9. How to check if the last command was successful in Unix?
echo $?
10. Write command to list all the links from a directory?
ls -lrt | grep "^l"
11. How will you find which operating system your system is running on in UNIX?
uname -a
12. Create a read-only file in your home directory?
touch file; chmod 400 file
13. How do you see command line history in UNIX?
The 'history' command can be used to get the list of commands that we are executed.
14. How to display the first 20 lines of a file?
By default, the head command displays the first 10 lines from a file. If we change
the option of head, then we can display as many lines as we want.
head -20 filename
An alternative solution is using the sed command
sed '21,$ d' filename
The d option here deletes the lines from 21 to the end of the file
15. Write a command to print the last line of a file?
The tail command can be used to display the last lines from a file.
tail -1 filename
Alternative solutions are:
sed -n '$ p' filename
awk 'END{print $0}' filename
16. How do you rename the files in a directory with _new as suffix?
ls -lrt|grep '^-'| awk '{print "mv "$9" "$9".new"}' | sh
17. Write a command to convert a string from lower case to upper case?
echo "apple" | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
18. Write a command to convert a string to Initcap.
echo apple | awk '{print toupper(substr($1,1,1)) tolower(substr($1,2))}'
19. Write a command to redirect the output of date command to multiple files?
The tee command writes the output to multiple files and also displays the output on
the terminal.
date | tee -a file1 file2 file3
20. How do you list the hidden files in current directory?
ls -a | grep '^\.'

21. List out some of the Hot Keys available in bash shell?
Ctrl+l - Clears the Screen.
Ctrl+r - Does a search in previously given commands in shell.
Ctrl+u - Clears the typing before the hotkey.
Ctrl+a - Places cursor at the beginning of the command at shell.
Ctrl+e - Places cursor at the end of the command at shell.
Ctrl+d - Kills the shell.
Ctrl+z - Places the currently running process into background.
22. How do you make an existing file empty?
cat /dev/null > filename
23. How do you remove the first number on 10th line in file?
sed '10 s/[0-9][0-9]*//' < filename
24. What is the difference between join -v and join -a?
join -v : outputs only matched lines between two files.
join -a : In addition to the matched lines, this will output unmatched lines also.
25. How do you display from the 5th character to the end of the line from a file?
cut -c 5- filename

26. Display all the files in current directory sorted by size?

ls -l | grep '^-' | awk '{print $5,$9}' |sort -n|awk '{print $2}'

27. Write a command to search for the file 'map' in the current directory?
find -name map -type f

28. How to display the first 10 characters from each line of a file?
cut -c -10 filename
29. Write a command to remove the first number on all lines that start with "@"?
sed '\,^@, s/[0-9][0-9]*//' < filename

30. How to print the file names in a directory that has the word "term"?
grep -l term *
The '-l' option make the grep command to print only the filename without printing
the content of the file. As soon as the grep command finds the pattern in a file,
it prints the pattern and stops searching other lines in the file.

31. How to run awk command specified in a file?

awk -f filename

32. How do you display the calendar for the month march in the year 1985?
The cal command can be used to display the current month calendar. You can pass the
month and year as arguments to display the required year, month combination
calendar.
cal 03 1985
This will display the calendar for the March month and year 1985.

33. Write a command to find the total number of lines in a file?

wc -l filename
Other ways to pring the total number of lines are
awk 'BEGIN {sum=0} {sum=sum+1} END {print sum}' filename
awk 'END{print NR}' filename

34. How to duplicate empty lines in a file?

sed '/^$/ p' < filename

35. Explain iostat, vmstat and netstat?

Iostat: reports on terminal, disk and tape I/O activity.
Vmstat: reports on virtual memory statistics for processes, disk, tape and CPU
activity.
Netstat: reports on the contents of network data structures.
36. How do you write the contents of 3 files into a single file?
cat file1 file2 file3 > file
37. How to display the fields in a text file in reverse order?
awk 'BEGIN {ORS=""} { for(i=NF;i>0;i--) print $i," "; print "\n"}' filename
38. Write a command to find the sum of bytes (size of file) of all files in a
directory.
ls -l | grep '^-'| awk 'BEGIN {sum=0} {sum = sum + $5} END {print sum}'
39. Write a command to print the lines which end with the word "end"?
grep 'end$' filename
The '$' symbol specifies the grep command to search for the pattern at the end of
the line.
40. Write a command to select only those lines containing "july" as a whole word?
grep -w july filename
The '-w' option makes the grep command to search for exact whole words. If the
specified pattern is found in a string, then it is not considered as a whole word.
For example: In the string "mikejulymak", the pattern "july" is found. However
"july" is not a whole word in that string.
41. How to remove the first 10 lines from a file?
sed '1,10 d' < filename
42. Write a command to duplicate each line in a file?
sed 'p' < filename
43. How to extract the username from 'who am i' comamnd?
who am i | cut -f1 -d' '
44. Write a command to list the files in '/usr' directory that start with 'ch' and
then display the number of lines in each file?
wc -l /usr/ch*
Another way is
find /usr -name 'ch*' -type f -exec wc -l {} \;
45. How to remove blank lines in a file ?
grep -v �^$� filename > new_filename

46. How to display the processes that were run by your user name ?
ps -aef | grep <user_name>
47. Write a command to display all the files recursively with path under current
directory?
find . -depth -print
48. Display zero byte size files in the current directory?
find -size 0 -type f
49. Write a command to display the third and fifth character from each line of a
file?
cut -c 3,5 filename
50. Write a command to print the fields from 10th to the end of the line. The
fields in the line are delimited by a comma?
cut -d',' -f10- filename
51. How to replace the word "Gun" with "Pen" in the first 100 lines of a file?
sed '1,00 s/Gun/Pen/' < filename
52. Write a Unix command to display the lines in a file that do not contain the
word "RAM"?
grep -v RAM filename
The '-v' option tells the grep to print the lines that do not contain the specified
pattern.
53. How to print the squares of numbers from 1 to 10 using awk command
awk 'BEGIN { for(i=1;i<=10;i++) {print "square of",i,"is",i*i;}}'
54. Write a command to display the files in the directory by file size?
ls -l | grep '^-' |sort -nr -k 5
55. How to find out the usage of the CPU by the processes?
The top utility can be used to display the CPU usage by the processes.
56. Write a command to remove the prefix of the string ending with '/'.
The basename utility deletes any prefix ending in /. The usage is mentioned below:
basename /usr/local/bin/file
This will display only file
57. How to display zero byte size files?
ls -l | grep '^-' | awk '/^-/ {if ($5 !=0 ) print $9 }'
58. How to replace the second occurrence of the word "bat" with "ball" in a file?
sed 's/bat/ball/2' < filename
59. How to remove all the occurrences of the word "jhon" except the first one in a
line with in the entire file?
sed 's/jhon//2g' < filename
60. How to replace the word "lite" with "light" from 100th line to last line in a
file?
sed '100,$ s/lite/light/' < filename
61. How to list the files that are accessed 5 days ago in the current directory?
find -atime 5 -type f
62. How to list the files that were modified 5 days ago in the current directory?
find -mtime 5 -type f
63. How to list the files whose status is changed 5 days ago in the current
directory?
find -ctime 5 -type f
64. How to replace the character '/' with ',' in a file?
sed 's/\//,/' < filename
sed 's|/|,|' < filename
65. Write a command to find the number of files in a directory.
ls -l|grep '^-'|wc -l
66. Write a command to display your name 100 times.
The Yes utility can be used to repeatedly output a line with the specified string
or 'y'.
yes <your_name> | head -100
67. Write a command to display the first 10 characters from each line of a file?
cut -c -10 filename
68. The fields in each line are delimited by comma. Write a command to display
third field from each line of a file?
cut -d',' -f2 filename
69. Write a command to print the fields from 10 to 20 from each line of a file?
cut -d',' -f10-20 filename
70. Write a command to print the first 5 fields from each line?
cut -d',' -f-5 filename
71. By default the cut command displays the entire line if there is no delimiter in
it. Which cut option is used to supress these kind of lines?
The -s option is used to supress the lines that do not contain the delimiter.
72. Write a command to replace the word "bad" with "good" in file?
sed s/bad/good/ < filename
73. Write a command to replace the word "bad" with "good" globally in a file?
sed s/bad/good/g < filename
74. Write a command to replace the word "apple" with "(apple)" in a file?
sed s/apple/(&)/ < filename
75. Write a command to switch the two consecutive words "apple" and "mango" in a
file?
sed 's/\(apple\) \(mango\)/\2 \1/' < filename
76. Write a command to display the characters from 10 to 20 from each line of a
file?
cut -c 10-20 filename

77. Write a command to print the lines that has the the pattern "july" in all the
files in a particular directory?
grep july *
This will print all the lines in all files that contain the word �july� along with
the file name. If any of the files contain words like "JULY" or "July", the above
command would not print those lines.
78. Write a command to print the lines that has the word "july" in all the files in
a directory and also suppress the filename in the output.
grep -h july *
79. Write a command to print the lines that has the word "july" while ignoring the
case.
grep -i july *
The option i make the grep command to treat the pattern as case insensitive.
80. When you use a single file as input to the grep command to search for a
pattern, it won't print the filename in the output. Now write a grep command to
print the filename in the output without using the '-H' option.
grep pattern filename /dev/null
The /dev/null or null device is special file that discards the data written to it.
So, the /dev/null is always an empty file.
Another way to print the filename is using the '-H' option. The grep command for
this is
grep -H pattern filename
81. Write a command to print the file names in a directory that does not contain
the word "july"?
grep -L july *
The '-L' option makes the grep command to print the filenames that do not contain
the specified pattern.
82. Write a command to print the line numbers along with the line that has the word
"july"?
grep -n july filename
The '-n' option is used to print the line numbers in a file. The line numbers start
from 1
83. Write a command to print the lines that starts with the word "start"?
grep '^start' filename
The '^' symbol specifies the grep command to search for the pattern at the start of
the line.
84. In the text file, some lines are delimited by colon and some are delimited by
space. Write a command to print the third field of each line.
awk '{ if( $0 ~ /:/ ) { FS=":"; } else { FS =" "; } print $3 }' filename
85. Write a command to print the line number before each line?
awk '{print NR, $0}' filename
86. Write a command to print the second and third line of a file without using NR.
awk 'BEGIN {RS="";FS="\n"} {print $2,$3}' filename
87. How to create an alias for the complex command and remove the alias?
The alias utility is used to create the alias for a command. The below command
creates alias for ps -aef command.
alias pg='ps -aef'
If you use pg, it will work the same way as ps -aef.
To remove the alias simply use the unalias command as
unalias pg
88. Write a command to display todays date in the format of 'yyyy-mm-dd'?
The date command can be used to display todays date with time
date '+%Y-%m-%d'

99.For LOOP
1. Rename all ".old" files in the current directory to ".bak":
for i in *.old do j=`echo $i|sed 's/old/bak/'` mv $i $j done

2. Change all instances of "yes" to "no" in all ".txt" files in the current
directory. Back up the original files to ".bak".
for i in *.txt do j=`echo $i|sed 's/txt/bak/'` mv $i $j sed 's/yes/no/' $j > $i
done
3. Loop thru a text file containing possible file names. If the file is readable,
print the first line, otherwise print an error message:
for i in `cat file_list.txt` do if test -r $i
then
echo "Here is the first line of file: $i"
sed 1q $i
else
echo "file $i cannot be open for reading." fi done

How to print/display the first line of a file?

$> head -1 file.txt
$> sed '2,$ d' file.txt
How to print/display the last line of a file?
$> tail -1 file.txt
$> sed -n '$ p' test
How to display n-th line of a file?
$> sed �n '<n> p' file.txt
$> sed �n '4 p' test
$> head -<n> file.txt | tail -1
$> head -4 file.txt | tail -1
How to remove the first line / header from a file?
$> sed '1 d' file.txt
$> sed '1 d' file.txt > new_file.txt
$> mv new_file.txt file.txt
$> sed �i '1 d' file.txt
How to remove the last line/ trailer from a file in Unix script?
$> sed �i '$ d' file.txt
How to remove certain lines from a file in Unix?
$> sed �i '5,7 d' file.txt
How to remove the last n-th line from a file?
$> sed �i '96,100 d' file.txt # alternative to command [head -95 file.txt]
$> tt=`wc -l file.txt | cut -f1 -d' '`;sed �i "`expr $tt - 4`,$tt d" test

How to check the length of any line in a file?

$> sed �n '<n> p' file.txt
$> sed �n '35 p' file.txt | wc �c
How to check if a file is present in a particular directory in Unix?
$> ls �l file.txt; echo $?
How to check all the running processes in Unix?
$> ps �ef
$> ps aux
$>ps -e -o stime,user,pid,args,%mem,%cpu

Combine multiple Rows to a Column � Oracle

SELECT SUBSTR (SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH (NAME , ','), 2) FRUITS_LIST
FROM (SELECT NAME , ROW_NUMBER () OVER (ORDER BY NAME ) RN,
COUNT (*) OVER () CNT
FROM FRUITS)
WHERE RN = CNT
START WITH RN = 1
CONNECT BY RN = PRIOR RN + 1;

What is command to check space in Unix

df -k

What is command to kill last background Job

kill $!
What is difference between diff and cmp command
cmp -It compares two files byte by byte and displays first mismatch.
diff -It displays all changes required to make files identical.

What does $# stands for

It will return the number of parameters passed as command line argument.

1. Write command to list all the links from a directory?

In this UNIX command interview questions interviewer is generally checking whether
user knows basic use of "ls" "grep" and regular expression etc
You can write command like:
ls -lrt | grep "^l"

2. Create a read-only file in your home directory?

This is a simple UNIX command interview questions where you need to create a file
and change its parameter to read-only by using chmod command you can also change
your umask to create read only file.
touch file
chmod 400 file

3. How will you find which operating system your system is running on in UNIX?
By using command "uname -a" in UNIX

4. How will you run a process in background? How will you bring that into
foreground and how will you kill that process?
For running a process in background use "&" in command line. For bringing it back
in foreground use command "fg jobid" and for getting job id you use command "jobs",
for killing that process find PID and use kill -9 PID command. This is indeed a
good Unix Command interview questions because many of programmer not familiar with
background process in UNIX.

5. How do you know if a remote host is alive or not?

You can check these by using either ping or telnet command in UNIX. This question
is most asked in various Unix command Interview because its most basic networking
test anybody wants to do it.

6. How do you see command line history in UNIX?

Very useful indeed, use history command along with grep command in unix to find any
relevant command you have already executed. Purpose of this Unix Command Interview
Questions is probably to check how familiar candidate is from available tools in
UNIX operation system.

7. How do you copy file from one host to other?

Many options but you can say by using "scp" command. You can also use rsync command
to answer this UNIX interview question or even sftp would be ok.

8. How do you find which process is taking how much CPU?

By using "top" command in UNIX, there could be multiple follow-up UNIX command
interview questions based upon response of this because �TOP� command has various
interactive options to sort result based upon various parameter.

9. How do you check how much space left in current drive ?

By using "df" command in UNIX. For example "df -h ." will list how full your
current drive is. This is part of anyone day to day activity so I think this Unix
Interview question will be to check anyone who claims to working in UNIX but not
really working on it.

10. What is the difference between Swapping and Paging?

Swapping:
Whole process is moved from the swap device to the main memory for execution.
Process size must be less than or equal to the available main memory. It is easier
to implementation and overhead to the system. Swapping systems does not handle the
memory more flexibly as compared to the paging systems.
Paging:
Only the required memory pages are moved to main memory from the swap device for
execution. Process size does not matter. Gives the concept of the virtual memory.
It provides greater flexibility in mapping the virtual address space into the
physical memory of the machine. Allows more number of processes to fit in the main
memory simultaneously. Allows the greater process size than the available physical
memory. Demand paging systems handle the memory more flexibly.

1. What is difference between ps -ef and ps -auxwww?

This is indeed a good Unix Interview Command Question and I have faced this issue
while ago where one culprit process was not visible by execute ps �ef command and
we are wondering which process is holding the file.
ps -ef will omit process with very long command line while ps -auxwww will list
those process as well.

2. How do you find how many cpu are in your system and there details?
By looking into file /etc/cpuinfo for example you can use below command:
cat /proc/cpuinfo

3. What is difference between HardLink and SoftLink in UNIX?

I have discussed this Unix Command Interview questions in my blog post difference
between Soft link and Hard link in Unix
4. What is Zombie process in UNIX? How do you find Zombie process in UNIX?
When a program forks and the child finishes before the parent, the kernel still
keeps some of its information about the child in case the parent might need it -
for example, the parent may need to check the child's exit status. To be able to
get this information, the parent calls 'wait()'; In the interval between the child
terminating and the parent calling 'wait()', the child is said to be a 'zombie' (If
you do 'ps', the child will have a 'Z' in its status field to indicate this.)
Zombie : The process is dead but have not been removed from the process table.

5. What is "chmod" command? What do you understand by this line �r-- -w- --x?

6. There is a file some where in your system which contains word

"UnixCommandInterviewQuestions� How will find that file in Unix?
By using find command in UNIX for details see here 10 example of using find command
in Unix

7. In a file word UNIX is appearing many times? How will you count number?
grep -c "Unix" filename

8. How do you set environment variable which will be accessible form sub shell?
By using export for example export count=1 will be available on all sub shell.

9. How do you check if a particular process is listening on a particular port on

remote host?
By using telnet command for example �telnet hostname port�, if it able to
successfully connect then some process is listening on that port. To read more
about telnet read networking command in UNIX

10. How do you find whether your system is 32 bit or 64 bit ?

Either by using "uname -a" command or by using "arch" command.

1. How do you find which processes are using a particular file?

By using lsof command in UNIX. It wills list down PID of all the process which is
using a particular file.

2. How do you find which remote hosts are connecting to your host on a particular
port say 10123?
By using netstat command execute netstat -a | grep "port" and it will list the
entire host which is connected to this host on port 10123.

3. What is nohup in UNIX?

4. What is ephemeral port in UNIX?

Ephemeral ports are port used by Operating system for client sockets. There is a
specific range on which OS can open any port specified by ephemeral port range.

5. If one process is inserting data into your MySQL database? How will you check
how many rows inserted into every second?
Purpose of this Unix Command Interview is asking about "watch" command in UNIX
which is repeatedly execute command provided with specified delay.

6. There is a file Unix_Test.txt which contains words Unix, how will you replace
all Unix to UNIX?
You can answer this Unix Command Interview question by using SED command in UNIX
for example you can execute sed s/Unix/UNIX/g fileName.

7. You have a tab separated file which contains Name, Address and Phone Number,
list down all Phone Number without there name and Addresses?
To answer this Unix Command Interview question you can either you AWK or CUT
command here. CUT use tab as default separator so you can use
cut -f3 filename.

8. Your application home directory is full? How will you find which directory is
taking how much space?
By using disk usage (DU) command in Unix for example du �sh . | grep G will list
down all the directory which has GIGS in Size.

9. How do you find for how many days your Server is up?
By using uptime command in UNIX

10. You have an IP address in your network how will you find hostname and vice
versa?
This is a standard UNIX command interview question asked by everybody and I guess
everybody knows its answer as well.
By using nslookup command in UNIX, you can read more about networking command in
UNIX here.