Bash Reference Manual

Table of Contents

Bash Features

This text is a brief description of the features that are present in the Bash shell (version 5.1, 21 December 2020). The Bash home page is http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/.

This is Edition 5.1, last updated 21 December 2020, of The GNU Bash Reference Manual, for Bash, Version 5.1.

Bash contains features that appear in other popular shells, and some features that only appear in Bash. Some of the shells that Bash has borrowed concepts from are the Bourne Shell (sh), the Korn Shell (ksh), and the C-shell (csh and its successor, tcsh). The following menu breaks the features up into categories, noting which features were inspired by other shells and which are specific to Bash.

This manual is meant as a brief introduction to features found in Bash. The Bash manual page should be used as the definitive reference on shell behavior.

Introduction	An introduction to the shell.
Definitions	Some definitions used in the rest of this manual.
Basic Shell Features	The shell "building blocks".
Shell Builtin Commands	Commands that are a part of the shell.
Shell Variables	Variables used or set by Bash.
Bash Features	Features found only in Bash.
Job Control	What job control is and how Bash allows you to use it.
Command Line Editing	Chapter describing the command line editing features.
Using History Interactively	Command History Expansion
Installing Bash	How to build and install Bash on your system.
Reporting Bugs	How to report bugs in Bash.
Major Differences From The Bourne Shell	A terse list of the differences between Bash and historical versions of /bin/sh.
GNU Free Documentation License	Copying and sharing this documentation.
Indexes	Various indexes for this manual.