Some Basic Commands UNIX

Displaying the Date and Time: The date Command

The date command tells the system to print the date and time:

$ date

Sat Jul 20 14:42:56 EDT 2002

$

Finding Out Who's Logged In: The who Command

The who command can be used to get information about all users currently logged in to the system:

$ who

pat       tty29    Jul 19 14:40

ruth      tty37    Jul 19 10:54

steve     tty25    Jul 19 15:52

$

The who command also can be used to get information about yourself:

$ who am i

pat       tty29   Jul 19 14:40

$

who and who am i are actually the same command: who. In the latter case, the am and i are arguments to the who command.

Echoing Characters: The echo Command

The echo command prints (or echoes) at the terminal whatever else you happen to type on the line (there are some exceptions to this that you'll learn about later):

$ echo this is a test

this is a test

$ echo why not print out a longer line with echo?

why not print out a longer line with echo?

$ echo A blank line is displayed

$ echo one