Questions specific to GNU’s Bourne Again SHell, as opposed to other Bourne/POSIX shells. For questions about Unix shells in general, use the /shell tag instead. For shell scripts with errors/syntax errors, please check them with the shellcheck program (or in the web shellcheck server at https://shellcheck.net) before posting here.
Bash (the GNU Bourne Again SHell) is a Unix shell. It was built as a free replacement to the Bourne shell and includes many scripting features from other shells, such as ksh and (t)csh. When called as sh, it is intended to conform to the POSIX 1003.1 standard. Bash features include: command line editing with the readline library, command history, job control, functions & aliases, arrays, dynamic prompts, integer arithmetic, and command & filename completion. Bash is the default interactive shell on most Linux distributions and is usually available on other Unix variants. Some GNU/Linux systems even use it as the default shell /bin/sh.
Because Bash is a common shell, you may be using it by default, so beware the temptation to choose this tag by default! Use bash only if your question is about Bash-specific syntax or the interactive use of Bash. Use the tag shell instead if your question is about a sh (Bourne or POSIX) script. Use shell-script if you have a question about a shell’s interaction with other programs.
Before asking for help about problems with Bash scripts, consider debugging the script yourself first.
Related tags
- shell Many shell-agnostic questions are of interest to Bash users.
- shell-script For questions about shell scripting in general
Other shells
- ksh - the Korn shell
- csh - the C shell
- tcsh - the TENEX C shell
- zsh - the Z shell
- dash - the Debian Almquist shell
- fish - the friendly interactive shell
Features related to Bash
- wildcards (or globbing): matching files based on their name
- command-history a history of commands that can be navigated with the Up and Down keys, searched, etc.; also a recall mechanism based on expanding sequences beginning with
! - autocomplete completion of partially-entered file names, command names, options and other arguments
- prompt showing a prompt before each command, which many users like to customize
- readline the GNU library implementing the line editing and history handling in Bash (and other terminal applications like
gdbandpython) - alias for defining shortcuts for frequently-used commands
- array a data structure for storing items in index-able memory
Bash reference material
- Bash GNU project web page
- Bash maintainer's web page
- Bash FAQ by the maintainer, Chet Ramey
Sampling of Bash-related Unix.SE questions:
- Why does my shell script choke on whitespace or other special characters?
- What are the shell's control and redirection operators?
- Is there a ".bashrc" equivalent file read by all shells?
- What features are in zsh and missing from bash, or vice versa?
- Change directory without typing cd?
- Understanding the exclamation mark (!) in bash
- Preserve bash history in multiple terminal windows
- Bash autocomplete in ssh session
- How do I clear Bash's cache of paths to executables?
- Command-line completion from command history
- In Bash, when to alias, when to script, and when to write a function?
- How to do integer & float calculations, in bash or other languages/frameworks?
- Why is my bash prompt getting bugged when I browse the history? (and other editing weirdness)
Books and other resources
- Bash Reference Manual
- Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide (PDF)
- Bash Guide for Beginners (PDF)
- Lhunath's Bash Guide
- Bash Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
- Bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition
- Learning the Bash Shell, 3rd Edition
- The Command Line Crash Course (appendix to "Learn Python the Hard Way")
- Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial
- The Art of Command Line
