The Bourne Again SHell (aka BASH) is installed by Git for Windows and is available on the Mac as Terminal. Bash is a programming language with an interactive component. This means that it can execute scripts on its own or be run within a terminal emulator. Git Bash's terminal emulator is called minTTY but it doesn't work well with console applications thus is is recommended to use ConEmu instead.
Since this team uses either Windows or Mac OS/X, only examples pertaining to Git For Windows (Git Bash) or Mac Terminal will be identified below. There a lot of other programs that are installed with Git for Windows other than Bash and Git (see GNU Core Utils). This document will refer to them all as part of Bash.
| Operation | Windows | MacTerminal |
|---|---|---|
| Back one character | ctrl + b or left arrow |
|
| Back one word | alt + b |
|
| Clear screen (except current line) | ctrl + l |
|
| Command Completion | tab |
tab |
| Copy text to clipboard | ctrl + c or ctrl + insert |
ctrl + insert |
| Delete word in front of cursor | alt + d |
|
| Forward one character | ctrl + f or right arrow |
|
| Forward one word | alt + f |
|
| Move to end of line | ctrl + e |
|
| Move to start of line | ctrl + a |
|
| Next Command | ctrl + n or down arrow |
|
| Open new terminal | alt + F2 |
|
| Paste text from clipboard | ctrl + v |
shift + insert |
| Previous command (show) | ctrl + p or up arrow |
|
| Previous command (execute) | !! |
|
| Switch between windows | ctrl + shift + tab |
By default, git-Bash will copy text to the clipboard whenever it has been selected with a mouse. And will paste that text when the middle mouse button is clicked.
Describing all of the capabilities of each bash or GNU program is outside the scope of this document. You are encouraged to Google man <command name> for additional detail.
| Action | Command |
|---|---|
| Change directory | cd <name of directory; Use quotes if name contain spaces |
| Copy a file | cp <name of file> <destination> |
| Create a file | echo "stuff" > <name of file (see Bash I/O redirection) |
| Create an empty file | touch <name of file> |
| Find a file | find There is a Windows command by the same name so you will likely need to create an alias for find . -name "*help.md" -type f -print |
| Move a file | mv <name of file> <destination |
| Rename a file | mv <name of file> <new name> |
| Search inside a file | grep <regular expression> <file name> |
| Show content of file | cat <name of file>; pipe to less to page |
| Show current directory | pwd |
| Show directory contents | ls; common options are -l = long, h = human, tr = sort by time reverse |
| Show first n lines of file | head -n 5 <name of file> |
| Show last n lines of file | tail -n 5 <name of file>; add -f to continuously watch |
The output from most commands can be directed to another command by way of a | pipe. This enables one to chain a series of commands separated by pipes. history | grep find | grep -v 'grep find' | awk '{ print $1 }' | sort -r | head -n 1
Bash maintains a history of command lines executed. To see this list, enter history.
$ history
...
35 2017-08-01 15:47:17 |yarn add log4js yargs
36 2017-08-01 15:47:41 |yarn remove yargs
37 2017-08-01 15:47:50 |yarn add yargs
38 2017-08-01 15:53:40 |yarn add eslint --dev
39 2017-08-01 15:55:02 |clear
40 2017-08-01 16:00:37 |yarn add cflint --dev
41 2017-08-01 16:00:37 |ls -lhOne can pipe the output to grep in order to find specific commands.
$ history | grep 'yarn add' | grep -v history
34 2017-08-01 15:46:19 |yarn add --save log4js yargs
35 2017-08-01 15:47:17 |yarn add log4js yargs
37 2017-08-01 15:47:50 |yarn add yargs
38 2017-08-01 15:53:40 |yarn add eslint --dev
40 2017-08-01 16:00:37 |yarn add cflint --dev
46 2017-08-01 16:06:21 |yarn add eslint@3.19.0
47 2017-08-01 16:06:40 |yarn add eslint@3.19.0 --dev
51 2017-08-01 16:07:24 |yarn add eslint@3.19.0 --dev
694 2017-08-04 23:23:35 |yarn add gulp-watch --devTyping ! followed by a line number will copy that command to the command line. !41 will place ls -lh onto command line
When ever a new shell is started, bash looks in your home folder (cd ~) for a configuration file named .bashrc and loads it into the new shell. This does not effect already open shells. To pick up any changes in an existing shell, enter source ~/.bashrc
An alias can be created with the command alias <name>="<command>" where name is a single case-sensitive word and command is a valid command line or script name contained in quotes. There must not be spaces adjacent to the equals sign.
$ alias ll="ls -lhtr"
$ ll
total 53K
-rw-r--r-- 1 JONESB 1049089 344 Aug 1 17:50 README.md
drwxr-xr-x 1 JONESB 1049089 0 Aug 1 17:50 images/
-rw-r--r-- 1 JONESB 1049089 1.7K Aug 7 15:13 development-environment.md
drwxr-xr-x 1 JONESB 1049089 0 Aug 7 16:07 editors/
-rw-r--r-- 1 JONESB 1049089 8.8K Aug 7 16:07 js-style.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 JONESB 1049089 4.7K Aug 7 16:07 synchronize.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 JONESB 1049089 9.0K Aug 7 16:21 git-help.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 JONESB 1049089 7.3K Aug 7 16:21 github-workflow.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 JONESB 1049089 1.5K Aug 7 17:45 bash-help.mdBest to confirm an alias works as desired by using the alias command. Once confirmed, add it to your .bashrc file if it exists, create it otherwise.
To see a list of all aliases available in current shell, type alias by itself.
$ alias
alias gcm='git commit'
alias gco='git checkout'
alias gst='git status'
alias ll='ls -lhtr'
alias ls='ls -F --color=auto --show-control-chars'
alias node='winpty node.exe'Aliases also accept arguments from command line like any other command. Thus given the gco alias above, one can create a new git branch with gco -b <branch name>
$ find . -maxdepth 2 -type d -name '.git' -print \
| xargs -I{} grep -Hm 1 projects {}/config 2>/dev/null \
| cut -d':' -f1 | cut -d'/' -f1-3find .. -maxdepth 2 -type d -name '.git' -print | xargs -I{} grep -Hm 1 projects {}/config 2>/dev/null | cut -d':' -f1 | cut -d'/' -f1-3 | xargs -I{} git -C {} log master --author="Begin-Again" - -oneline | wc -lBash and GNU together are incredibly powerful but like most things, one has to invest time into learning. These are some tutorials and sites which have been found to be helpful.