Where can i find a list of commands for bash 4.2

Question

I am looking for a complete list of bash commands as well as what the command does. Everything i find is some long drawn out article.

Answer 1

Bash commands is a bit unclear.

It can be two things:

• Bash builtins
• Shell commands in general

The list of builtins can be found using man bash-builtins. The complete list:

   bash defines the following built-in commands: :, ., [, alias, bg, bind,
   break,  builtin,  case,  cd,  command,  compgen,  complete,   continue,
   declare,  dirs, disown, echo, enable, eval, exec, exit, export, fc, fg,
   getopts, hash, help, history, if, jobs, kill, let, local, logout, popd,
   printf,  pushd, pwd, read, readonly, return, set, shift, shopt, source,
   suspend, test, times, trap,  type,  typeset,  ulimit,  umask,  unalias,
   unset, until, wait, while.

The manpage has documentation for most of those.

If you, however, as I suspect, think about a complete list of shell commands, the majority which is provided by other software than bash (which is just the shell), there's probably no such list. It differs wildly based on what you have installed. For instance you probably doesn't have w_scan on your system - or gnu-ais. I have them on some of my systems.

Generally, man command will give you a description of that command. You should also read this excellent introduction to man by dessert.