Provided by: mksh_46-2ubuntu3_amd64 
NAME
mksh, sh — MirBSD Korn shell
SYNOPSIS
mksh [-+abCefhiklmnprUuvXx] [-T /dev/ttyCn | -] [-+o option] [-c string | -s | file [argument ...]]
builtin-name [argument ...]
DESCRIPTION
mksh is a command interpreter intended for both interactive and shell script use. Its command language
is a superset of the sh(C) shell language and largely compatible to the original Korn shell.
I'm an Android user, so what's mksh?
mksh is a Unix shell / command interpreter, similar to COMMAND.COM or CMD.EXE, which has been included
with Android Open Source Project for a while now. Basically, it's a program that runs in a terminal
(console window), takes user input and runs commands or scripts, which it can also be asked to do by
other programs, even in the background. Any privilege pop-ups you might be encountering are thus not
mksh issues but questions by some other program utilising it.
Invocation
Most builtins can be called directly, for example if a link points from its name to the shell; not all
make sense, have been tested or work at all though.
The options are as follows:
-c string mksh will execute the command(s) contained in string.
-i Interactive shell. A shell is “interactive” if this option is used or if both standard input
and standard error are attached to a tty(4). An interactive shell has job control enabled,
ignores the SIGINT, SIGQUIT, and SIGTERM signals, and prints prompts before reading input (see
the PS1 and PS2 parameters). It also processes the ENV parameter or the mkshrc file (see
below). For non-interactive shells, the trackall option is on by default (see the set command
below).
-l Login shell. If the basename the shell is called with (i.e. argv[0]) starts with ‘-’ or if
this option is used, the shell is assumed to be a login shell; see “Startup files” below.
-p Privileged shell. A shell is “privileged” if this option is used or if the real user ID or
group ID does not match the effective user ID or group ID (see getuid(2) and getgid(2)).
Clearing the privileged option causes the shell to set its effective user ID (group ID) to its
real user ID (group ID). For further implications, see “Startup files”.
-r Restricted shell. A shell is “restricted” if this option is used. The following restrictions
come into effect after the shell processes any profile and ENV files:
• The cd (and chdir) command is disabled.
• The SHELL, ENV, and PATH parameters cannot be changed.
• Command names can't be specified with absolute or relative paths.
• The -p option of the built-in command command can't be used.
• Redirections that create files can't be used (i.e. ‘>’, ‘>|’, ‘>>’, ‘<>’).
-s The shell reads commands from standard input; all non-option arguments are positional
parameters.
-T tty Spawn mksh on the tty(4) device given. Superuser only. If tty is a dash, detach from
controlling terminal (daemonise) instead.
In addition to the above, the options described in the set built-in command can also be used on the
command line: both [-+abCefhkmnuvXx] and [-+o option] can be used for single letter or long options,
respectively.
If neither the -c nor the -s option is specified, the first non-option argument specifies the name of a
file the shell reads commands from. If there are no non-option arguments, the shell reads commands from
the standard input. The name of the shell (i.e. the contents of $0) is determined as follows: if the -c
option is used and there is a non-option argument, it is used as the name; if commands are being read
from a file, the file is used as the name; otherwise, the basename the shell was called with (i.e.
argv[0]) is used.
The exit status of the shell is 127 if the command file specified on the command line could not be
opened, or non-zero if a fatal syntax error occurred during the execution of a script. In the absence of
fatal errors, the exit status is that of the last command executed, or zero, if no command is executed.
Startup files
For the actual location of these files, see “FILES”. A login shell processes the system profile first.
A privileged shell then processes the suid profile. A non-privileged login shell processes the user
profile next. A non-privileged interactive shell checks the value of the ENV parameter after subjecting
it to parameter, command, arithmetic and tilde (‘~’) substitution; if unset or empty, the user mkshrc
profile is processed; otherwise, if a file whose name is the substitution result exists, it is processed;
non-existence is silently ignored.
Command syntax
The shell begins parsing its input by removing any backslash-newline combinations, then breaking it into
words. Words (which are sequences of characters) are delimited by unquoted whitespace characters (space,
tab, and newline) or meta-characters (‘<’, ‘>’, ‘|’, ‘;’, ‘(’, ‘)’, and ‘&’). Aside from delimiting
words, spaces and tabs are ignored, while newlines usually delimit commands. The meta-characters are
used in building the following tokens: ‘<’, ‘<&’, ‘<<’, ‘<<<’, ‘>’, ‘>&’, ‘>>’, ‘&>’, etc. are used to
specify redirections (see “Input/output redirection” below); ‘|’ is used to create pipelines; ‘|&’ is
used to create co-processes (see “Co-processes” below); ‘;’ is used to separate commands; ‘&’ is used to
create asynchronous pipelines; ‘&&’ and ‘||’ are used to specify conditional execution; ‘;;’, ‘;&’ and
‘;|’ are used in case statements; ‘(( .. ))’ is used in arithmetic expressions; and lastly, ‘( .. )’ is
used to create subshells.
Whitespace and meta-characters can be quoted individually using a backslash (‘\’), or in groups using
double (‘"’) or single (‘'’) quotes. Note that the following characters are also treated specially by
the shell and must be quoted if they are to represent themselves: ‘\’, ‘"’, ‘'’, ‘#’, ‘$’, ‘`’, ‘~’, ‘{’,
‘}’, ‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘[’. The first three of these are the above mentioned quoting characters (see
“Quoting” below); ‘#’, if used at the beginning of a word, introduces a comment – everything after the
‘#’ up to the nearest newline is ignored; ‘$’ is used to introduce parameter, command, and arithmetic
substitutions (see “Substitution” below); ‘`’ introduces an old-style command substitution (see
“Substitution” below); ‘~’ begins a directory expansion (see “Tilde expansion” below); ‘{’ and ‘}’
delimit csh(1)-style alterations (see “Brace expansion” below); and finally, ‘*’, ‘?’, and ‘[’ are used
in file name generation (see “File name patterns” below).
As words and tokens are parsed, the shell builds commands, of which there are two basic types:
simple-commands, typically programmes that are executed, and compound-commands, such as for and if
statements, grouping constructs, and function definitions.
A simple-command consists of some combination of parameter assignments (see “Parameters” below),
input/output redirections (see “Input/output redirections” below), and command words; the only
restriction is that parameter assignments come before any command words. The command words, if any,
define the command that is to be executed and its arguments. The command may be a shell built-in
command, a function, or an external command (i.e. a separate executable file that is located using the
PATH parameter; see “Command execution” below). Note that all command constructs have an exit status:
for external commands, this is related to the status returned by wait(2) (if the command could not be
found, the exit status is 127; if it could not be executed, the exit status is 126); the exit status of
other command constructs (built-in commands, functions, compound-commands, pipelines, lists, etc.) are
all well-defined and are described where the construct is described. The exit status of a command
consisting only of parameter assignments is that of the last command substitution performed during the
parameter assignment or 0 if there were no command substitutions.
Commands can be chained together using the ‘|’ token to form pipelines, in which the standard output of
each command but the last is piped (see pipe(2)) to the standard input of the following command. The
exit status of a pipeline is that of its last command, unless the pipefail option is set (see there).
All commands of a pipeline are executed in separate subshells; this is allowed by POSIX but differs from
both variants of AT&T UNIX ksh, where all but the last command were executed in subshells; see the read
builtin's description for implications and workarounds. A pipeline may be prefixed by the ‘!’ reserved
word which causes the exit status of the pipeline to be logically complemented: if the original status
was 0, the complemented status will be 1; if the original status was not 0, the complemented status will
be 0.
Lists of commands can be created by separating pipelines by any of the following tokens: ‘&&’, ‘||’, ‘&’,
‘|&’, and ‘;’. The first two are for conditional execution: “cmd1 && cmd2” executes cmd2 only if the
exit status of cmd1 is zero; ‘||’ is the opposite – cmd2 is executed only if the exit status of cmd1 is
non-zero. ‘&&’ and ‘||’ have equal precedence which is higher than that of ‘&’, ‘|&’, and ‘;’, which
also have equal precedence. Note that the ‘&&’ and ‘||’ operators are "left-associative". For example,
both of these commands will print only "bar":
$ false && echo foo || echo bar
$ true || echo foo && echo bar
The ‘&’ token causes the preceding command to be executed asynchronously; that is, the shell starts the
command but does not wait for it to complete (the shell does keep track of the status of asynchronous
commands; see “Job control” below). When an asynchronous command is started when job control is disabled
(i.e. in most scripts), the command is started with signals SIGINT and SIGQUIT ignored and with input
redirected from /dev/null (however, redirections specified in the asynchronous command have precedence).
The ‘|&’ operator starts a co-process which is a special kind of asynchronous process (see “Co-processes”
below). Note that a command must follow the ‘&&’ and ‘||’ operators, while it need not follow ‘&’, ‘|&’,
or ‘;’. The exit status of a list is that of the last command executed, with the exception of
asynchronous lists, for which the exit status is 0.
Compound commands are created using the following reserved words. These words are only recognised if
they are unquoted and if they are used as the first word of a command (i.e. they can't be preceded by
parameter assignments or redirections):
case else function then ! (
do esac if time [[ ((
done fi in until {
elif for select while }
In the following compound command descriptions, command lists (denoted as list) that are followed by
reserved words must end with a semicolon, a newline, or a (syntactically correct) reserved word. For
example, the following are all valid:
$ { echo foo; echo bar; }
$ { echo foo; echo bar<newline>}
$ { { echo foo; echo bar; } }
This is not valid:
$ { echo foo; echo bar }
(list)
Execute list in a subshell. There is no implicit way to pass environment changes from a subshell
back to its parent.
{ list; }
Compound construct; list is executed, but not in a subshell. Note that ‘{’ and ‘}’ are reserved
words, not meta-characters.
case word in [[(] pattern [| pat] ...) list [;; | ;& | ;| ]] ... esac
The case statement attempts to match word against a specified pattern; the list associated with the
first successfully matched pattern is executed. Patterns used in case statements are the same as
those used for file name patterns except that the restrictions regarding ‘.’ and ‘/’ are dropped.
Note that any unquoted space before and after a pattern is stripped; any space within a pattern
must be quoted. Both the word and the patterns are subject to parameter, command, and arithmetic
substitution, as well as tilde substitution.
For historical reasons, open and close braces may be used instead of in and esac e.g. case $foo {
*) echo bar;; }.
The list terminators are:
‘;;’ Terminate after the list.
‘;&’ Fall through into the next list.
‘;|’ Evaluate the remaining pattern-list tuples.
The exit status of a case statement is that of the executed list; if no list is executed, the exit
status is zero.
for name [in word ...]; do list; done
For each word in the specified word list, the parameter name is set to the word and list is
executed. If in is not used to specify a word list, the positional parameters ($1, $2, etc.) are
used instead. For historical reasons, open and close braces may be used instead of do and done
e.g. for i; { echo $i; }. The exit status of a for statement is the last exit status of list; if
list is never executed, the exit status is zero.
if list; then list; [elif list; then list;] ... [else list;] fi
If the exit status of the first list is zero, the second list is executed; otherwise, the list
following the elif, if any, is executed with similar consequences. If all the lists following the
if and elifs fail (i.e. exit with non-zero status), the list following the else is executed. The
exit status of an if statement is that of non-conditional list that is executed; if no non-
conditional list is executed, the exit status is zero.
select name [in word ...]; do list; done
The select statement provides an automatic method of presenting the user with a menu and selecting
from it. An enumerated list of the specified word(s) is printed on standard error, followed by a
prompt (PS3: normally ‘#? ’). A number corresponding to one of the enumerated words is then read
from standard input, name is set to the selected word (or unset if the selection is not valid),
REPLY is set to what was read (leading/trailing space is stripped), and list is executed. If a
blank line (i.e. zero or more IFS octets) is entered, the menu is reprinted without executing list.
When list completes, the enumerated list is printed if REPLY is NULL, the prompt is printed, and so
on. This process continues until an end-of-file is read, an interrupt is received, or a break
statement is executed inside the loop. If “in word ...” is omitted, the positional parameters are
used (i.e. $1, $2, etc.). For historical reasons, open and close braces may be used instead of do
and done e.g. select i; { echo $i; }. The exit status of a select statement is zero if a break
statement is used to exit the loop, non-zero otherwise.
until list; do list; done
This works like while, except that the body is executed only while the exit status of the first
list is non-zero.
while list; do list; done
A while is a pre-checked loop. Its body is executed as often as the exit status of the first list
is zero. The exit status of a while statement is the last exit status of the list in the body of
the loop; if the body is not executed, the exit status is zero.
function name { list; }
Defines the function name (see “Functions” below). Note that redirections specified after a
function definition are performed whenever the function is executed, not when the function
definition is executed.
name() command
Mostly the same as function (see “Functions” below). Whitespace (space or tab) after name will be
ignored most of the time.
function name() { list; }
The same as name() (bashism). The function keyword is ignored.
time [-p] [pipeline]
The “Command execution” section describes the time reserved word.
(( expression ))
The arithmetic expression expression is evaluated; equivalent to “let expression” (see “Arithmetic
expressions” and the let command, below).
[[ expression ]]
Similar to the test and [ ... ] commands (described later), with the following exceptions:
• Field splitting and file name generation are not performed on arguments.
• The -a (AND) and -o (OR) operators are replaced with ‘&&’ and ‘||’, respectively.
• Operators (e.g. ‘-f’, ‘=’, ‘!’) must be unquoted.
• Parameter, command, and arithmetic substitutions are performed as expressions are evaluated and
lazy expression evaluation is used for the ‘&&’ and ‘||’ operators. This means that in the
following statement, $(<foo) is evaluated if and only if the file foo exists and is readable:
$ [[ -r foo && $(<foo) = b*r ]]
• The second operand of the ‘!=’ and ‘=’ expressions are patterns (e.g. the comparison [[ foobar
= f*r ]] succeeds). This even works indirectly:
$ bar=foobar; baz='f*r'
$ [[ $bar = $baz ]]; echo $?
$ [[ $bar = "$baz" ]]; echo $?
Perhaps surprisingly, the first comparison succeeds, whereas the second doesn't.
Quoting
Quoting is used to prevent the shell from treating characters or words specially. There are three
methods of quoting. First, ‘\’ quotes the following character, unless it is at the end of a line, in
which case both the ‘\’ and the newline are stripped. Second, a single quote (‘'’) quotes everything up
to the next single quote (this may span lines). Third, a double quote (‘"’) quotes all characters,
except ‘$’, ‘`’ and ‘\’, up to the next unquoted double quote. ‘$’ and ‘`’ inside double quotes have
their usual meaning (i.e. parameter, command, or arithmetic substitution) except no field splitting is
carried out on the results of double-quoted substitutions. If a ‘\’ inside a double-quoted string is
followed by ‘\’, ‘$’, ‘`’, or ‘"’, it is replaced by the second character; if it is followed by a
newline, both the ‘\’ and the newline are stripped; otherwise, both the ‘\’ and the character following
are unchanged.
If a single-quoted string is preceded by an unquoted ‘$’, C style backslash expansion (see below) is
applied (even single quote characters inside can be escaped and do not terminate the string then); the
expanded result is treated as any other single-quoted string. If a double-quoted string is preceded by
an unquoted ‘$’, the latter is ignored.
Backslash expansion
In places where backslashes are expanded, certain C and AT&T UNIX ksh or GNU bash style escapes are
translated. These include ‘\a’, ‘\b’, ‘\f’, ‘\n’, ‘\r’, ‘\t’, ‘\U########’, ‘\u####’, and ‘\v’. For
‘\U########’ and ‘\u####’, “#” means a hexadecimal digit, of thich there may be none up to four or eight;
these escapes translate a Unicode codepoint to UTF-8. Furthermore, ‘\E’ and ‘\e’ expand to the escape
character.
In the print builtin mode, ‘\"’, ‘\'’, and ‘\?’ are explicitly excluded; octal sequences must have the
none up to three octal digits “#” prefixed with the digit zero (‘\0###’); hexadecimal sequences ‘\x##’
are limited to none up to two hexadecimal digits “#”; both octal and hexadecimal sequences convert to raw
octets; ‘\#’, where # is none of the above, translates to \# (backslashes are retained).
Backslash expansion in the C style mode slightly differs: octal sequences ‘\###’ must have no digit zero
prefixing the one up to three octal digits “#” and yield raw octets; hexadecimal sequences ‘\x#*’
greedily eat up as many hexadecimal digits “#” as they can and terminate with the first non-hexadecimal
digit; these translate a Unicode codepoint to UTF-8. The sequence ‘\c#’, where “#” is any octet,
translates to Ctrl-# (which basically means, ‘\c?’ becomes DEL, everything else is bitwise ANDed with
0x1F). Finally, ‘\#’, where # is none of the above, translates to # (has the backslash trimmed), even if
it is a newline.
Aliases
There are two types of aliases: normal command aliases and tracked aliases. Command aliases are normally
used as a short hand for a long or often used command. The shell expands command aliases (i.e.
substitutes the alias name for its value) when it reads the first word of a command. An expanded alias
is re-processed to check for more aliases. If a command alias ends in a space or tab, the following word
is also checked for alias expansion. The alias expansion process stops when a word that is not an alias
is found, when a quoted word is found, or when an alias word that is currently being expanded is found.
Aliases are specifically an interactive feature: while they do happen to work in scripts and on the
command line in some cases, aliases are expanded during lexing, so their use must be in a separate
command tree from their definition; otherwise, the alias will not be found. Noticeably, command lists
(separated by semicolon, in command substitutions also by newline) may be one same parse tree.
The following command aliases are defined automatically by the shell:
autoload='typeset -fu'
functions='typeset -f'
hash='alias -t'
history='fc -l'
integer='typeset -i'
local='typeset'
login='exec login'
nameref='typeset -n'
nohup='nohup '
r='fc -e -'
stop='kill -STOP'
suspend='kill -STOP $$'
type='whence -v'
Tracked aliases allow the shell to remember where it found a particular command. The first time the
shell does a path search for a command that is marked as a tracked alias, it saves the full path of the
command. The next time the command is executed, the shell checks the saved path to see that it is still
valid, and if so, avoids repeating the path search. Tracked aliases can be listed and created using
alias -t. Note that changing the PATH parameter clears the saved paths for all tracked aliases. If the
trackall option is set (i.e. set -o trackall or set -h), the shell tracks all commands. This option is
set automatically for non-interactive shells. For interactive shells, only the following commands are
automatically tracked: cat(1), cc(1), chmod(1), cp(1), date(1), ed(1), emacs(1), grep(1), ls(1), make(1),
mv(1), pr(1), rm(1), sed(1), sh(1), vi(1), and who(1).
Substitution
The first step the shell takes in executing a simple-command is to perform substitutions on the words of
the command. There are three kinds of substitution: parameter, command, and arithmetic. Parameter
substitutions, which are described in detail in the next section, take the form $name or ${...}; command
substitutions take the form $(command) or (deprecated) `command` or (executed in the current environment)
${ command;} and strip trailing newlines; and arithmetic substitutions take the form $((expression)).
Parsing the current-environment command substitution requires a space, tab or newline after the opening
brace and that the closing brace be recognised as a keyword (i.e. is preceded by a newline or semicolon).
They are also called funsubs (function substitutions) and behave like functions in that local and return
work, and in that exit terminates the parent shell.
Another variant of substitution are the valsubs (value substitutions) ${|command;} which are also
executed in the current environment, like funsubs, but share their I/O with the parent; instead, they
evaluate to whatever the, initially empty, expression-local variable REPLY is set to within the commands.
If a substitution appears outside of double quotes, the results of the substitution are generally subject
to word or field splitting according to the current value of the IFS parameter. The IFS parameter
specifies a list of octets which are used to break a string up into several words; any octets from the
set space, tab, and newline that appear in the IFS octets are called “IFS whitespace”. Sequences of one
or more IFS whitespace octets, in combination with zero or one non-IFS whitespace octets, delimit a
field. As a special case, leading and trailing IFS whitespace and trailing IFS non-whitespace are
stripped (i.e. no leading or trailing empty field is created by it); leading non-IFS whitespace does
create an empty field.
Example: If IFS is set to “<space>:”, and VAR is set to “<space>A<space>:<space><space>B::D”, the
substitution for $VAR results in four fields: ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘’ (an empty field), and ‘D’. Note that if the
IFS parameter is set to the NULL string, no field splitting is done; if the parameter is unset, the
default value of space, tab, and newline is used.
Also, note that the field splitting applies only to the immediate result of the substitution. Using the
previous example, the substitution for $VAR:E results in the fields: ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘’, and ‘D:E’, not ‘A’,
‘B’, ‘’, ‘D’, and ‘E’. This behavior is POSIX compliant, but incompatible with some other shell
implementations which do field splitting on the word which contained the substitution or use IFS as a
general whitespace delimiter.
The results of substitution are, unless otherwise specified, also subject to brace expansion and file
name expansion (see the relevant sections below).
A command substitution is replaced by the output generated by the specified command which is run in a
subshell. For $(command) and ${ command;} substitutions, normal quoting rules are used when command is
parsed; however, for the deprecated `command` form, a ‘\’ followed by any of ‘$’, ‘`’, or ‘\’ is stripped
(a ‘\’ followed by any other character is unchanged). As a special case in command substitutions, a
command of the form <file is interpreted to mean substitute the contents of file. Note that $(<foo) has
the same effect as $(cat foo).
Note that some shells do not use a recursive parser for command substitutions, leading to failure for
certain constructs; to be portable, use as workaround ‘x=$(cat) <<"EOF"’ (or the newline-keeping
‘x=<<"EOF"’ extension) instead to merely slurp the string. IEEE Std 1003.1 (“POSIX.1”) recommends to use
case statements of the form ‘x=$(case $foo in (bar) echo $bar ;; (*) echo $baz ;; esac)’ instead, which
would work but not serve as example for this portability issue.
x=$(case $foo in bar) echo $bar ;; *) echo $baz ;; esac)
# above fails to parse on old shells; below is the workaround
x=$(eval $(cat)) <<"EOF"
case $foo in bar) echo $bar ;; *) echo $baz ;; esac
EOF
Arithmetic substitutions are replaced by the value of the specified expression. For example, the command
print $((2+3*4)) displays 14. See “Arithmetic expressions” for a description of an expression.
Parameters
Parameters are shell variables; they can be assigned values and their values can be accessed using a
parameter substitution. A parameter name is either one of the special single punctuation or digit
character parameters described below, or a letter followed by zero or more letters or digits (‘_’ counts
as a letter). The latter form can be treated as arrays by appending an array index of the form [expr]
where expr is an arithmetic expression. Array indices in mksh are limited to the range 0 through
4294967295, inclusive. That is, they are a 32-bit unsigned integer.
Parameter substitutions take the form $name, ${name}, or ${name[expr]} where name is a parameter name.
Substitution of all array elements with ${name[*]} and ${name[@]} works equivalent to $* and $@ for
positional parameters. If substitution is performed on a parameter (or an array parameter element) that
is not set, a null string is substituted unless the nounset option (set -o nounset or set -u) is set, in
which case an error occurs.
Parameters can be assigned values in a number of ways. First, the shell implicitly sets some parameters
like ‘#’, ‘PWD’, and ‘$’; this is the only way the special single character parameters are set. Second,
parameters are imported from the shell's environment at startup. Third, parameters can be assigned
values on the command line: for example, FOO=bar sets the parameter “FOO” to “bar”; multiple parameter
assignments can be given on a single command line and they can be followed by a simple-command, in which
case the assignments are in effect only for the duration of the command (such assignments are also
exported; see below for the implications of this). Note that both the parameter name and the ‘=’ must be
unquoted for the shell to recognise a parameter assignment. The construct FOO+=baz is also recognised;
the old and new values are immediately concatenated. The fourth way of setting a parameter is with the
export, global, readonly, and typeset commands; see their descriptions in the “Command execution”
section. Fifth, for and select loops set parameters as well as the getopts, read, and set -A commands.
Lastly, parameters can be assigned values using assignment operators inside arithmetic expressions (see
“Arithmetic expressions” below) or using the ${name=value} form of the parameter substitution (see
below).
Parameters with the export attribute (set using the export or typeset -x commands, or by parameter
assignments followed by simple commands) are put in the environment (see environ(7)) of commands run by
the shell as name=value pairs. The order in which parameters appear in the environment of a command is
unspecified. When the shell starts up, it extracts parameters and their values from its environment and
automatically sets the export attribute for those parameters.
Modifiers can be applied to the ${name} form of parameter substitution:
${name:-word}
If name is set and not NULL, it is substituted; otherwise, word is substituted.
${name:+word}
If name is set and not NULL, word is substituted; otherwise, nothing is substituted.
${name:=word}
If name is set and not NULL, it is substituted; otherwise, it is assigned word and the resulting
value of name is substituted.
${name:?word}
If name is set and not NULL, it is substituted; otherwise, word is printed on standard error
(preceded by name:) and an error occurs (normally causing termination of a shell script,
function, or script sourced using the ‘.’ built-in). If word is omitted, the string “parameter
null or not set” is used instead. Currently a bug, if word is a variable which expands to the
null string, the error message is also printed.
Note that, for all of the above, word is actually considered quoted, and special parsing rules apply.
The parsing rules also differ on whether the expression is double-quoted: word then uses double-quoting
rules, except for the double quote itself (‘"’) and the closing brace, which, if backslash escaped, gets
quote removal applied.
In the above modifiers, the ‘:’ can be omitted, in which case the conditions only depend on name being
set (as opposed to set and not NULL). If word is needed, parameter, command, arithmetic, and tilde
substitution are performed on it; if word is not needed, it is not evaluated.
The following forms of parameter substitution can also be used (if name is an array, its element #0 will
be substituted in a scalar context):
${#name}
The number of positional parameters if name is ‘*’, ‘@’, or not specified; otherwise the length
(in characters) of the string value of parameter name.
${#name[*]}
${#name[@]}
The number of elements in the array name.
${%name}
The width (in screen columns) of the string value of parameter name, or -1 if ${name} contains a
control character.
${!name}
The name of the variable referred to by name. This will be name except when name is a name
reference (bound variable), created by the nameref command (which is an alias for typeset -n).
${!name[*]}
${!name[@]}
The names of indices (keys) in the array name.
${name#pattern}
${name##pattern}
If pattern matches the beginning of the value of parameter name, the matched text is deleted from
the result of substitution. A single ‘#’ results in the shortest match, and two of them result
in the longest match. Cannot be applied to a vector (${*} or ${@} or ${array[*]} or
${array[@]}).
${name%pattern}
${name%%pattern}
Like ${..#..} substitution, but it deletes from the end of the value. Cannot be applied to a
vector.
${name/pattern/string}
${name//pattern/string}
Like ${..#..} substitution, but it replaces the longest match of pattern, anchored anywhere in
the value, with string. If pattern begins with ‘#’, it is anchored at the beginning of the
value; if it begins with ‘%’, it is anchored at the end. Patterns that are empty or consist only
of wildcards are invalid. A single ‘/’ replaces the first occurence of the search pattern, and
two of them replace all occurences. If /string is omitted, the pattern is replaced by the empty
string, i.e. deleted. Cannot be applied to a vector. Inefficiently implemented, may be slow.
${name:pos:len}
The first len characters of name, starting at position pos, are substituted. Both pos and :len
are optional. If pos is negative, counting starts at the end of the string; if it is omitted, it
defaults to 0. If len is omitted or greater than the length of the remaining string, all of it
is substituted. Both pos and len are evaluated as arithmetic expressions. Currently, pos must
start with a space, opening parenthesis or digit to be recognised. Cannot be applied to a
vector.
${name @#[seed]}
The internal hash of the expansion of name, with an optional (defaulting to zero) [seed]. At the
moment, this is NZAAT (a 32-bit hash based on Bob Jenkins' one-at-a-time hash), but this is not
set. This is the hash the shell uses internally for its associative arrays.
${name@Q}
A quoted expression safe for re-entry, whose value is the value of the name parameter, is
substituted.
Note that pattern may need extended globbing pattern (@(...)), single ('...') or double ("...") quote
escaping unless -o sh is set.
The following special parameters are implicitly set by the shell and cannot be set directly using
assignments:
! Process ID of the last background process started. If no background processes have been started,
the parameter is not set.
# The number of positional parameters ($1, $2, etc.).
$ The PID of the shell, or the PID of the original shell if it is a subshell. Do NOT use this
mechanism for generating temporary file names; see mktemp(1) instead.
- The concatenation of the current single letter options (see the set command below for a list of
options).
? The exit status of the last non-asynchronous command executed. If the last command was killed by
a signal, $? is set to 128 plus the signal number.
0 The name of the shell, determined as follows: the first argument to mksh if it was invoked with
the -c option and arguments were given; otherwise the file argument, if it was supplied; or else
the basename the shell was invoked with (i.e. argv[0]). $0 is also set to the name of the
current script or the name of the current function, if it was defined with the function keyword
(i.e. a Korn shell style function).
1 .. 9 The first nine positional parameters that were supplied to the shell, function, or script sourced
using the ‘.’ built-in. Further positional parameters may be accessed using ${number}.
* All positional parameters (except 0), i.e. $1, $2, $3, ...
If used outside of double quotes, parameters are separate words (which are subjected to word
splitting); if used within double quotes, parameters are separated by the first character of the
IFS parameter (or the empty string if IFS is NULL).
@ Same as $*, unless it is used inside double quotes, in which case a separate word is generated
for each positional parameter. If there are no positional parameters, no word is generated. $@
can be used to access arguments, verbatim, without losing NULL arguments or splitting arguments
with spaces.
The following parameters are set and/or used by the shell:
_ (underscore) When an external command is executed by the shell, this parameter is set in the
environment of the new process to the path of the executed command. In interactive use,
this parameter is also set in the parent shell to the last word of the previous command.
BASHPID The PID of the shell or subshell.
CDPATH Search path for the cd built-in command. It works the same way as PATH for those
directories not beginning with ‘/’ in cd commands. Note that if CDPATH is set and does not
contain ‘.’ or contains an empty path, the current directory is not searched. Also, the cd
built-in command will display the resulting directory when a match is found in any search
path other than the empty path.
COLUMNS Set to the number of columns on the terminal or window. Always set, defaults to 80, unless
the value as reported by stty(1) is non-zero and sane enough (minimum is 12x3); similar for
LINES. This parameter is used by the interactive line editing modes, and by the select, set
-o, and kill -l commands to format information columns. Importing from the environment or
unsetting this parameter removes the binding to the actual terminal size in favour of the
provided value.
ENV If this parameter is found to be set after any profile files are executed, the expanded
value is used as a shell startup file. It typically contains function and alias
definitions.
ERRNO Integer value of the shell's errno variable. It indicates the reason the last system call
failed. Not yet implemented.
EXECSHELL If set, this parameter is assumed to contain the shell that is to be used to execute
commands that execve(2) fails to execute and which do not start with a “#!shell” sequence.
FCEDIT The editor used by the fc command (see below).
FPATH Like PATH, but used when an undefined function is executed to locate the file defining the
function. It is also searched when a command can't be found using PATH. See “Functions”
below for more information.
HISTFILE The name of the file used to store command history. When assigned to, history is loaded
from the specified file. Also, several invocations of the shell will share history if their
HISTFILE parameters all point to the same file.
Note: If HISTFILE isn't set, no history file is used. This is different from AT&T UNIX ksh.
HISTSIZE The number of commands normally stored for history. The default is 2047.
HOME The default directory for the cd command and the value substituted for an unqualified ~ (see
“Tilde expansion” below).
IFS Internal field separator, used during substitution and by the read command, to split values
into distinct arguments; normally set to space, tab, and newline. See “Substitution” above
for details.
Note: This parameter is not imported from the environment when the shell is started.
KSHEGID The effective group id of the shell.
KSHGID The real group id of the shell.
KSHUID The real user id of the shell.
KSH_VERSION The name and version of the shell (read-only). See also the version commands in “Emacs
editing mode” and “Vi editing mode” sections, below.
LINENO The line number of the function or shell script that is currently being executed.
LINES Set to the number of lines on the terminal or window. Always set, defaults to 24. See
COLUMNS.
EPOCHREALTIME
Time since the epoch, as returned by gettimeofday(2), formatted as decimal tv_sec followed
by a dot (‘.’) and tv_usec padded to exactly six decimal digits.
OLDPWD The previous working directory. Unset if cd has not successfully changed directories since
the shell started, or if the shell doesn't know where it is.
OPTARG When using getopts, it contains the argument for a parsed option, if it requires one.
OPTIND The index of the next argument to be processed when using getopts. Assigning 1 to this
parameter causes getopts to process arguments from the beginning the next time it is
invoked.
PATH A colon separated list of directories that are searched when looking for commands and files
sourced using the ‘.’ command (see below). An empty string resulting from a leading or
trailing colon, or two adjacent colons, is treated as a ‘.’ (the current directory).
PGRP The process ID of the shell's process group leader.
PIPESTATUS An array containing the errorlevel (exit status) codes, one by one, of the last pipeline run
in the foreground.
PPID The process ID of the shell's parent.
PS1 The primary prompt for interactive shells. Parameter, command, and arithmetic substitutions
are performed, and ‘!’ is replaced with the current command number (see the fc command
below). A literal ‘!’ can be put in the prompt by placing ‘!!’ in PS1.
The default prompt is ‘$ ’ for non-root users, ‘# ’ for root. If mksh is invoked by root
and PS1 does not contain a ‘#’ character, the default value will be used even if PS1 already
exists in the environment.
The mksh distribution comes with a sample dot.mkshrc containing a sophisticated example, but
you might like the following one (note that ${HOSTNAME:=$(hostname)} and the root-vs-user
distinguishing clause are (in this example) executed at PS1 assignment time, while the $USER
and $PWD are escaped and thus will be evaluated each time a prompt is displayed):
PS1='${USER:=$(id -un)}'"@${HOSTNAME:=$(hostname)}:\$PWD $(
if (( USER_ID )); then print \$; else print \#; fi) "
Note that since the command-line editors try to figure out how long the prompt is (so they
know how far it is to the edge of the screen), escape codes in the prompt tend to mess
things up. You can tell the shell not to count certain sequences (such as escape codes) by
prefixing your prompt with a character (such as Ctrl-A) followed by a carriage return and
then delimiting the escape codes with this character. Any occurences of that character in
the prompt are not printed. By the way, don't blame me for this hack; it's derived from the
original ksh88(1), which did print the delimiter character so you were out of luck if you
did not have any non-printing characters.
Since Backslashes and other special characters may be interpreted by the shell, to set PS1
either escape the backslash itself, or use double quotes. The latter is more practical.
This is a more complex example, avoiding to directly enter special characters (for example
with ^V in the emacs editing mode), which embeds the current working directory, in reverse
video (colour would work, too), in the prompt string:
x=$(print \\001)
PS1="$x$(print \\r)$x$(tput smso)$x\$PWD$x$(tput rmso)$x> "
Due to a strong suggestion from David G. Korn, mksh now also supports the following form:
PS1=$'\1\r\1\e[7m\1$PWD\1\e[0m\1> '
PS2 Secondary prompt string, by default ‘> ’, used when more input is needed to complete a
command.
PS3 Prompt used by the select statement when reading a menu selection. The default is ‘#? ’.
PS4 Used to prefix commands that are printed during execution tracing (see the set -x command
below). Parameter, command, and arithmetic substitutions are performed before it is
printed. The default is ‘+ ’. You may want to set it to ‘[$EPOCHREALTIME] ’ instead, to
include timestamps.
PWD The current working directory. May be unset or NULL if the shell doesn't know where it is.
RANDOM Each time RANDOM is referenced, it is assigned a number between 0 and 32767 from a Linear
Congruential PRNG first.
REPLY Default parameter for the read command if no names are given. Also used in select loops to
store the value that is read from standard input.
SECONDS The number of seconds since the shell started or, if the parameter has been assigned an
integer value, the number of seconds since the assignment plus the value that was assigned.
TMOUT If set to a positive integer in an interactive shell, it specifies the maximum number of
seconds the shell will wait for input after printing the primary prompt (PS1). If the time
is exceeded, the shell exits.
TMPDIR The directory temporary shell files are created in. If this parameter is not set, or does
not contain the absolute path of a writable directory, temporary files are created in /tmp.
USER_ID The effective user id of the shell.
Tilde expansion
Tilde expansion which is done in parallel with parameter substitution, is done on words starting with an
unquoted ‘~’. The characters following the tilde, up to the first ‘/’, if any, are assumed to be a login
name. If the login name is empty, ‘+’, or ‘-’, the value of the HOME, PWD, or OLDPWD parameter is
substituted, respectively. Otherwise, the password file is searched for the login name, and the tilde
expression is substituted with the user's home directory. If the login name is not found in the password
file or if any quoting or parameter substitution occurs in the login name, no substitution is performed.
In parameter assignments (such as those preceding a simple-command or those occurring in the arguments of
alias, export, global, readonly, and typeset), tilde expansion is done after any assignment (i.e. after
the equals sign) or after an unquoted colon (‘:’); login names are also delimited by colons.
The home directory of previously expanded login names are cached and re-used. The alias -d command may
be used to list, change, and add to this cache (e.g. alias -d fac=/usr/local/facilities; cd ~fac/bin).
Brace expansion (alteration)
Brace expressions take the following form:
prefix{str1,...,strN}suffix
The expressions are expanded to N words, each of which is the concatenation of prefix, stri, and suffix
(e.g. “a{c,b{X,Y},d}e” expands to four words: “ace”, “abXe”, “abYe”, and “ade”). As noted in the
example, brace expressions can be nested and the resulting words are not sorted. Brace expressions must
contain an unquoted comma (‘,’) for expansion to occur (e.g. {} and {foo} are not expanded). Brace
expansion is carried out after parameter substitution and before file name generation.
File name patterns
A file name pattern is a word containing one or more unquoted ‘?’, ‘*’, ‘+’, ‘@’, or ‘!’ characters or
“[..]” sequences. Once brace expansion has been performed, the shell replaces file name patterns with
the sorted names of all the files that match the pattern (if no files match, the word is left unchanged).
The pattern elements have the following meaning:
? Matches any single character.
* Matches any sequence of octets.
[..] Matches any of the octets inside the brackets. Ranges of octets can be specified by separating
two octets by a ‘-’ (e.g. “[a0-9]” matches the letter ‘a’ or any digit). In order to represent
itself, a ‘-’ must either be quoted or the first or last octet in the octet list. Similarly, a
‘]’ must be quoted or the first octet in the list if it is to represent itself instead of the end
of the list. Also, a ‘!’ appearing at the start of the list has special meaning (see below), so
to represent itself it must be quoted or appear later in the list.
[!..] Like [..], except it matches any octet not inside the brackets.
*(pattern|...|pattern)
Matches any string of octets that matches zero or more occurrences of the specified patterns.
Example: The pattern *(foo|bar) matches the strings “”, “foo”, “bar”, “foobarfoo”, etc.
+(pattern|...|pattern)
Matches any string of octets that matches one or more occurrences of the specified patterns.
Example: The pattern +(foo|bar) matches the strings “foo”, “bar”, “foobar”, etc.
?(pattern|...|pattern)
Matches the empty string or a string that matches one of the specified patterns. Example: The
pattern ?(foo|bar) only matches the strings “”, “foo”, and “bar”.
@(pattern|...|pattern)
Matches a string that matches one of the specified patterns. Example: The pattern @(foo|bar)
only matches the strings “foo” and “bar”.
!(pattern|...|pattern)
Matches any string that does not match one of the specified patterns. Examples: The pattern
!(foo|bar) matches all strings except “foo” and “bar”; the pattern !(*) matches no strings; the
pattern !(?)* matches all strings (think about it).
Note that complicated globbing, especially with alternatives, is slow; using separate comparisons may (or
may not) be faster.
Note that mksh (and pdksh) never matches ‘.’ and ‘..’, but AT&T UNIX ksh, Bourne sh, and GNU bash do.
Note that none of the above pattern elements match either a period (‘.’) at the start of a file name or a
slash (‘/’), even if they are explicitly used in a [..] sequence; also, the names ‘.’ and ‘..’ are never
matched, even by the pattern ‘.*’.
If the markdirs option is set, any directories that result from file name generation are marked with a
trailing ‘/’.
Input/output redirection
When a command is executed, its standard input, standard output, and standard error (file descriptors 0,
1, and 2, respectively) are normally inherited from the shell. Three exceptions to this are commands in
pipelines, for which standard input and/or standard output are those set up by the pipeline, asynchronous
commands created when job control is disabled, for which standard input is initially set to be from
/dev/null, and commands for which any of the following redirections have been specified:
> file Standard output is redirected to file. If file does not exist, it is created; if it does
exist, is a regular file, and the noclobber option is set, an error occurs; otherwise, the
file is truncated. Note that this means the command cmd <foo >foo will open foo for reading
and then truncate it when it opens it for writing, before cmd gets a chance to actually read
foo.
>| file Same as >, except the file is truncated, even if the noclobber option is set.
>> file Same as >, except if file exists it is appended to instead of being truncated. Also, the
file is opened in append mode, so writes always go to the end of the file (see open(2)).
< file Standard input is redirected from file, which is opened for reading.
<> file Same as <, except the file is opened for reading and writing.
<< marker After reading the command line containing this kind of redirection (called a “here
document”), the shell copies lines from the command source into a temporary file until a line
matching marker is read. When the command is executed, standard input is redirected from the
temporary file. If marker contains no quoted characters, the contents of the temporary file
are processed as if enclosed in double quotes each time the command is executed, so
parameter, command, and arithmetic substitutions are performed, along with backslash (‘\’)
escapes for ‘$’, ‘`’, ‘\’, and ‘\newline’, but not for ‘"’. If multiple here documents are
used on the same command line, they are saved in order.
If no marker is given, the here document ends at the next << and substitution will be
performed. If marker is only a set of either single “''” or double ‘""’ quotes with nothing
in between, the here document ends at the next empty line and substitution will not be
performed.
<<- marker Same as <<, except leading tabs are stripped from lines in the here document.
<<< word Same as <<, except that word is the here document. This is called a here string.
<& fd Standard input is duplicated from file descriptor fd. fd can be a number, indicating the
number of an existing file descriptor; the letter ‘p’, indicating the file descriptor
associated with the output of the current co-process; or the character ‘-’, indicating
standard input is to be closed. Note that fd is limited to a single digit in most shell
implementations.
>& fd Same as <&, except the operation is done on standard output.
&> file Same as > file 2>&1. This is a GNU bash extension supported by mksh which also supports the
preceding explicit fd number, for example, 3&> file is the same as 3> file 2>&3 in mksh but a
syntax error in GNU bash. Setting the -o posix or -o sh shell options disable parsing of
this redirection; it's a compatibility feature to legacy scripts, to not be used when writing
new shell code.
&>| file, &>> file, &>& fd
Same as >| file, >> file, or >& fd, followed by 2>&1, as above. These are mksh extensions.
In any of the above redirections, the file descriptor that is redirected (i.e. standard input or standard
output) can be explicitly given by preceding the redirection with a number (portably, only a single
digit). Parameter, command, and arithmetic substitutions, tilde substitutions, and (if the shell is
interactive) file name generation are all performed on the file, marker, and fd arguments of
redirections. Note, however, that the results of any file name generation are only used if a single file
is matched; if multiple files match, the word with the expanded file name generation characters is used.
Note that in restricted shells, redirections which can create files cannot be used.
For simple-commands, redirections may appear anywhere in the command; for compound-commands (if
statements, etc.), any redirections must appear at the end. Redirections are processed after pipelines
are created and in the order they are given, so the following will print an error with a line number
prepended to it:
$ cat /foo/bar 2>&1 >/dev/null | pr -n -t
File descriptors created by input/output redirections are private to the Korn shell, but passed to sub-
processes if -o posix or -o sh is set.
Arithmetic expressions
Integer arithmetic expressions can be used with the let command, inside $((..)) expressions, inside array
references (e.g. name[expr]), as numeric arguments to the test command, and as the value of an assignment
to an integer parameter.
Expressions are calculated using signed arithmetic and the mksh_ari_t type (a 32-bit signed integer),
unless they begin with a sole ‘#’ character, in which case they use mksh_uari_t (a 32-bit unsigned
integer).
Expressions may contain alpha-numeric parameter identifiers, array references, and integer constants and
may be combined with the following C operators (listed and grouped in increasing order of precedence):
Unary operators:
+ - ! ~ ++ --
Binary operators:
,
= += -= *= /= %= <<<= >>>= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
||
&&
|
^
&
== !=
< <= > >=
<<< >>> << >>
+ -
* / %
Ternary operators:
?: (precedence is immediately higher than assignment)
Grouping operators:
( )
Integer constants and expressions are calculated using an exactly 32-bit wide, signed or unsigned, type
with silent wraparound on integer overflow. Integer constants may be specified with arbitrary bases
using the notation base#number, where base is a decimal integer specifying the base, and number is a
number in the specified base. Additionally, base-16 integers may be specified by prefixing them with
‘0x’ (case-insensitive) in all forms of arithmetic expressions, except as numeric arguments to the test
built-in command. Prefixing numbers with a sole digit zero (‘0’) leads to the shell interpreting it as
base-8 integer in posix mode only; historically, (pd)ksh has never done so either anyway, and it's unsafe
to do that, but POSIX demands it nowadays. As a special mksh extension, numbers to the base of one are
treated as either (8-bit transparent) ASCII or Unicode codepoints, depending on the shell's utf8-mode
flag (current setting). The AT&T UNIX ksh93 syntax of “'x'” instead of “1#x” is also supported. Note
that NUL bytes (integral value of zero) cannot be used. An unset or empty parameter evaluates to 0 in
integer context. In Unicode mode, raw octets are mapped into the range EF80..EFFF as in OPTU-8, which is
in the PUA and has been assigned by CSUR for this use. If more than one octet in ASCII mode, or a
sequence of more than one octet not forming a valid and minimal CESU-8 sequence is passed, the behaviour
is undefined (usually, the shell aborts with a parse error, but rarely, it succeeds, e.g. on the sequence
C2 20). That's why you should always use ASCII mode unless you know that the input is well-formed UTF-8
in the range of 0000..FFFD.
The operators are evaluated as follows:
unary +
Result is the argument (included for completeness).
unary -
Negation.
! Logical NOT; the result is 1 if argument is zero, 0 if not.
~ Arithmetic (bit-wise) NOT.
++ Increment; must be applied to a parameter (not a literal or other expression). The
parameter is incremented by 1. When used as a prefix operator, the result is the
incremented value of the parameter; when used as a postfix operator, the result is the
original value of the parameter.
-- Similar to ++, except the parameter is decremented by 1.
, Separates two arithmetic expressions; the left-hand side is evaluated first, then the
right. The result is the value of the expression on the right-hand side.
= Assignment; the variable on the left is set to the value on the right.
+= -= *= /= %= <<<= >>>= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Assignment operators. <var><op>=<expr> is the same as <var>=<var><op><expr>, with any
operator precedence in <expr> preserved. For example, “var1 *= 5 + 3” is the same as
specifying “var1 = var1 * (5 + 3)”.
|| Logical OR; the result is 1 if either argument is non-zero, 0 if not. The right argument
is evaluated only if the left argument is zero.
&& Logical AND; the result is 1 if both arguments are non-zero, 0 if not. The right argument
is evaluated only if the left argument is non-zero.
| Arithmetic (bit-wise) OR.
^ Arithmetic (bit-wise) XOR (exclusive-OR).
& Arithmetic (bit-wise) AND.
== Equal; the result is 1 if both arguments are equal, 0 if not.
!= Not equal; the result is 0 if both arguments are equal, 1 if not.
< Less than; the result is 1 if the left argument is less than the right, 0 if not.
<= > >=
Less than or equal, greater than or equal, greater than. See <.
<<< >>>
Rotate left (right); the result is similar to shift (see <<) except that the bits shifted
out at one end are shifted in at the other end, instead of zero or sign bits.
<< >> Shift left (right); the result is the left argument with its bits shifted left (right) by
the amount given in the right argument.
+ - * /
Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
% Remainder; the result is the remainder of the division of the left argument by the right.
<arg1>?<arg2>:<arg3>
If <arg1> is non-zero, the result is <arg2>; otherwise the result is <arg3>. The non-
result argument is not evaluated.
Co-processes
A co-process (which is a pipeline created with the ‘|&’ operator) is an asynchronous process that the
shell can both write to (using print -p) and read from (using read -p). The input and output of the co-
process can also be manipulated using >&p and <&p redirections, respectively. Once a co-process has been
started, another can't be started until the co-process exits, or until the co-process's input has been
redirected using an exec n>&p redirection. If a co-process's input is redirected in this way, the next
co-process to be started will share the output with the first co-process, unless the output of the
initial co-process has been redirected using an exec n<&p redirection.
Some notes concerning co-processes:
• The only way to close the co-process's input (so the co-process reads an end-of-file) is to redirect
the input to a numbered file descriptor and then close that file descriptor: exec 3>&p; exec 3>&-
• In order for co-processes to share a common output, the shell must keep the write portion of the
output pipe open. This means that end-of-file will not be detected until all co-processes sharing
the co-process's output have exited (when they all exit, the shell closes its copy of the pipe).
This can be avoided by redirecting the output to a numbered file descriptor (as this also causes the
shell to close its copy). Note that this behaviour is slightly different from the original Korn
shell which closes its copy of the write portion of the co-process output when the most recently
started co-process (instead of when all sharing co-processes) exits.
• print -p will ignore SIGPIPE signals during writes if the signal is not being trapped or ignored; the
same is true if the co-process input has been duplicated to another file descriptor and print -un is
used.
Functions
Functions are defined using either Korn shell function function-name syntax or the Bourne/POSIX shell
function-name() syntax (see below for the difference between the two forms). Functions are like
.‐scripts (i.e. scripts sourced using the ‘.’ built-in) in that they are executed in the current
environment. However, unlike .‐scripts, shell arguments (i.e. positional parameters $1, $2, etc.) are
never visible inside them. When the shell is determining the location of a command, functions are
searched after special built-in commands, before builtins and the PATH is searched.
An existing function may be deleted using unset -f function-name. A list of functions can be obtained
using typeset +f and the function definitions can be listed using typeset -f. The autoload command
(which is an alias for typeset -fu) may be used to create undefined functions: when an undefined function
is executed, the shell searches the path specified in the FPATH parameter for a file with the same name
as the function which, if found, is read and executed. If after executing the file the named function is
found to be defined, the function is executed; otherwise, the normal command search is continued (i.e.
the shell searches the regular built-in command table and PATH). Note that if a command is not found
using PATH, an attempt is made to autoload a function using FPATH (this is an undocumented feature of the
original Korn shell).
Functions can have two attributes, “trace” and “export”, which can be set with typeset -ft and typeset
-fx, respectively. When a traced function is executed, the shell's xtrace option is turned on for the
function's duration. The “export” attribute of functions is currently not used. In the original Korn
shell, exported functions are visible to shell scripts that are executed.
Since functions are executed in the current shell environment, parameter assignments made inside
functions are visible after the function completes. If this is not the desired effect, the typeset
command can be used inside a function to create a local parameter. Note that AT&T UNIX ksh93 uses static
scoping (one global scope, one local scope per function) and allows local variables only on Korn style
functions, whereas mksh uses dynamic scoping (nested scopes of varying locality). Note that special
parameters (e.g. $$, $!) can't be scoped in this way.
The exit status of a function is that of the last command executed in the function. A function can be
made to finish immediately using the return command; this may also be used to explicitly specify the exit
status.
Functions defined with the function reserved word are treated differently in the following ways from
functions defined with the () notation:
• The $0 parameter is set to the name of the function (Bourne-style functions leave $0 untouched).
• Parameter assignments preceding function calls are not kept in the shell environment (executing
Bourne-style functions will keep assignments).
• OPTIND is saved/reset and restored on entry and exit from the function so getopts can be used
properly both inside and outside the function (Bourne-style functions leave OPTIND untouched, so
using getopts inside a function interferes with using getopts outside the function).
• Bourne-style function definitions take precedence over alias dereferences and remove alias
definitions upon encounter, while aliases take precedence over Korn-style functions.
In the future, the following differences may also be added:
• A separate trap/signal environment will be used during the execution of functions. This will mean
that traps set inside a function will not affect the shell's traps and signals that are not ignored
in the shell (but may be trapped) will have their default effect in a function.
• The EXIT trap, if set in a function, will be executed after the function returns.
Command execution
After evaluation of command-line arguments, redirections, and parameter assignments, the type of command
is determined: a special built-in command, a function, a normal builtin, or the name of a file to execute
found using the PATH parameter. The checks are made in the above order. Special built-in commands
differ from other commands in that the PATH parameter is not used to find them, an error during their
execution can cause a non-interactive shell to exit, and parameter assignments that are specified before
the command are kept after the command completes. Regular built-in commands are different only in that
the PATH parameter is not used to find them.
The original ksh and POSIX differ somewhat in which commands are considered special or regular.
POSIX special built-in utilities:
., :, break, continue, eval, exec, exit, export, readonly, return, set, shift, times, trap, unset
Additional mksh commands keeping assignments:
builtin, global, typeset, wait
Builtins that are not special:
[, alias, bg, bind, cat, cd, command, echo, false, fc, fg, getopts, jobs, kill, let, mknod, print, pwd,
read, realpath, rename, sleep, test, true, ulimit, umask, unalias, whence
Once the type of command has been determined, any command-line parameter assignments are performed and
exported for the duration of the command.
The following describes the special and regular built-in commands:
. file [arg ...]
This is called the “dot” command. Execute the commands in file in the current environment. The
file is searched for in the directories of PATH. If arguments are given, the positional
parameters may be used to access them while file is being executed. If no arguments are given,
the positional parameters are those of the environment the command is used in.
: [...]
The null command. Exit status is set to zero.
[ expression ]
See test.
alias [-d | -t [-r] | +-x] [-p] [+] [name [=value] ...]
Without arguments, alias lists all aliases. For any name without a value, the existing alias is
listed. Any name with a value defines an alias (see “Aliases” above).
When listing aliases, one of two formats is used. Normally, aliases are listed as name=value,
where value is quoted. If options were preceded with ‘+’, or a lone ‘+’ is given on the command
line, only name is printed.
The -d option causes directory aliases which are used in tilde expansion to be listed or set (see
“Tilde expansion” above).
If the -p option is used, each alias is prefixed with the string “alias ”.
The -t option indicates that tracked aliases are to be listed/set (values specified on the command
line are ignored for tracked aliases). The -r option indicates that all tracked aliases are to be
reset.
The -x option sets (+x clears) the export attribute of an alias, or, if no names are given, lists
the aliases with the export attribute (exporting an alias has no effect).
bg [job ...]
Resume the specified stopped job(s) in the background. If no jobs are specified, %+ is assumed.
See “Job control” below for more information.
bind [-l]
The current bindings are listed. If the -l flag is given, bind instead lists the names of the
functions to which keys may be bound. See “Emacs editing mode” for more information.
bind [-m] string=[substitute] ...
bind string=[editing-command] ...
The specified editing command is bound to the given string, which should consist of a control
character optionally preceded by one of the two prefix characters and optionally succeded by a
tilde character. Future input of the string will cause the editing command to be immediately
invoked. If the -m flag is given, the specified input string will afterwards be immediately
replaced by the given substitute string which may contain editing commands but not other macros.
If a tilde postfix is given, a tilde trailing the one or two prefices and the control character is
ignored, any other trailing character will be processed afterwards.
Control characters may be written using caret notation i.e. ^X represents Ctrl-X. Note that
although only two prefix characters (usually ESC and ^X) are supported, some multi-character
sequences can be supported.
The following default bindings show how the arrow keys, the home, end and delete key on a BSD
wsvt25, xterm-xfree86 or GNU screen terminal are bound (of course some escape sequences won't work
out quite this nicely):
bind '^X'=prefix-2
bind '^[['=prefix-2
bind '^XA'=up-history
bind '^XB'=down-history
bind '^XC'=forward-char
bind '^XD'=backward-char
bind '^X1~'=beginning-of-line
bind '^X7~'=beginning-of-line
bind '^XH'=beginning-of-line
bind '^X4~'=end-of-line
bind '^X8~'=end-of-line
bind '^XF'=end-of-line
bind '^X3~'=delete-char-forward
break [level]
Exit the levelth inner-most for, select, until, or while loop. level defaults to 1.
builtin [--] command [arg ...]
Execute the built-in command command.
cat [-u] [file ...]
Read files sequentially, in command line order, and write them to standard output. If a file is a
single dash (‘-’) or absent, read from standard input. Unless compiled with MKSH_NO_EXTERNAL_CAT,
if any options are given, an external cat(1) utility is invoked instead if called from the shell.
For direct builtin calls, the POSIX -u option is supported as a no-op.
cd [-L] [dir]
cd -P [-e] [dir]
chdir [-eLP] [dir]
Set the working directory to dir. If the parameter CDPATH is set, it lists the search path for
the directory containing dir. A NULL path means the current directory. If dir is found in any
component of the CDPATH search path other than the NULL path, the name of the new working
directory will be written to standard output. If dir is missing, the home directory HOME is used.
If dir is ‘-’, the previous working directory is used (see the OLDPWD parameter).
If the -L option (logical path) is used or if the physical option isn't set (see the set command
below), references to ‘..’ in dir are relative to the path used to get to the directory. If the
-P option (physical path) is used or if the physical option is set, ‘..’ is relative to the
filesystem directory tree. The PWD and OLDPWD parameters are updated to reflect the current and
old working directory, respectively. If the -e option is set for physical filesystem traversal,
and PWD could not be set, the exit code is 1; greater than 1 if an error occurred, 0 otherwise.
cd [-eLP] old new
chdir [-eLP] old new
The string new is substituted for old in the current directory, and the shell attempts to change
to the new directory.
command [-pVv] cmd [arg ...]
If neither the -v nor -V option is given, cmd is executed exactly as if command had not been
specified, with two exceptions: firstly, cmd cannot be a shell function; and secondly, special
built-in commands lose their specialness (i.e. redirection and utility errors do not cause the
shell to exit, and command assignments are not permanent).
If the -p option is given, a default search path is used instead of the current value of PATH, the
actual value of which is system dependent.
If the -v option is given, instead of executing cmd, information about what would be executed is
given (and the same is done for arg ...). For special and regular built-in commands and
functions, their names are simply printed; for aliases, a command that defines them is printed;
and for commands found by searching the PATH parameter, the full path of the command is printed.
If no command is found (i.e. the path search fails), nothing is printed and command exits with a
non-zero status. The -V option is like the -v option, except it is more verbose.
continue [level]
Jumps to the beginning of the levelth inner-most for, select, until, or while loop. level
defaults to 1.
echo [-Een] [arg ...]
Warning: this utility is not portable; use the Korn shell builtin print instead.
Prints its arguments (separated by spaces) followed by a newline, to the standard output. The
newline is suppressed if any of the arguments contain the backslash sequence ‘\c’. See the print
command below for a list of other backslash sequences that are recognised.
The options are provided for compatibility with BSD shell scripts. The -n option suppresses the
trailing newline, -e enables backslash interpretation (a no-op, since this is normally done), and
-E suppresses backslash interpretation.
If the posix or sh option is set or this is a direct builtin call, only the first argument is
treated as an option, and only if it is exactly “-n”. Backslash interpretation is disabled.
eval command ...
The arguments are concatenated (with spaces between them) to form a single string which the shell
then parses and executes in the current environment.
exec [command [arg ...]]
The command is executed without forking, replacing the shell process.
If no command is given except for I/O redirection, the I/O redirection is permanent and the shell
is not replaced. Any file descriptors greater than 2 which are opened or dup(2)'d in this way are
not made available to other executed commands (i.e. commands that are not built-in to the shell).
Note that the Bourne shell differs here; it does pass these file descriptors on.
exit [status]
The shell exits with the specified exit status. If status is not specified, the exit status is
the current value of the $? parameter.
export [-p] [parameter[=value]]
Sets the export attribute of the named parameters. Exported parameters are passed in the
environment to executed commands. If values are specified, the named parameters are also
assigned.
If no parameters are specified, all parameters with the export attribute set are printed one per
line; either their names, or, if a ‘-’ with no option letter is specified, name=value pairs, or,
with -p, export commands suitable for re-entry.
false A command that exits with a non-zero status.
fc [-e editor | -l [-n]] [-r] [first [last]]
first and last select commands from the history. Commands can be selected by history number or a
string specifying the most recent command starting with that string. The -l option lists the
command on standard output, and -n inhibits the default command numbers. The -r option reverses
the order of the list. Without -l, the selected commands are edited by the editor specified with
the -e option, or if no -e is specified, the editor specified by the FCEDIT parameter (if this
parameter is not set, /bin/ed is used), and then executed by the shell.
fc -e - | -s [-g] [old=new] [prefix]
Re-execute the selected command (the previous command by default) after performing the optional
substitution of old with new. If -g is specified, all occurrences of old are replaced with new.
The meaning of -e - and -s is identical: re-execute the selected command without invoking an
editor. This command is usually accessed with the predefined: alias r='fc -e -'
fg [job ...]
Resume the specified job(s) in the foreground. If no jobs are specified, %+ is assumed. See “Job
control” below for more information.
getopts optstring name [arg ...]
Used by shell procedures to parse the specified arguments (or positional parameters, if no
arguments are given) and to check for legal options. optstring contains the option letters that
getopts is to recognise. If a letter is followed by a colon, the option is expected to have an
argument. Options that do not take arguments may be grouped in a single argument. If an option
takes an argument and the option character is not the last character of the argument it is found
in, the remainder of the argument is taken to be the option's argument; otherwise, the next
argument is the option's argument.
Each time getopts is invoked, it places the next option in the shell parameter name and the index
of the argument to be processed by the next call to getopts in the shell parameter OPTIND. If the
option was introduced with a ‘+’, the option placed in name is prefixed with a ‘+’. When an
option requires an argument, getopts places it in the shell parameter OPTARG.
When an illegal option or a missing option argument is encountered, a question mark or a colon is
placed in name (indicating an illegal option or missing argument, respectively) and OPTARG is set
to the option character that caused the problem. Furthermore, if optstring does not begin with a
colon, a question mark is placed in name, OPTARG is unset, and an error message is printed to
standard error.
When the end of the options is encountered, getopts exits with a non-zero exit status. Options
end at the first (non-option argument) argument that does not start with a ‘-’, or when a ‘--’
argument is encountered.
Option parsing can be reset by setting OPTIND to 1 (this is done automatically whenever the shell
or a shell procedure is invoked).
Warning: Changing the value of the shell parameter OPTIND to a value other than 1, or parsing
different sets of arguments without resetting OPTIND, may lead to unexpected results.
global ...
See typeset.
hash [-r] [name ...]
Without arguments, any hashed executable command pathnames are listed. The -r option causes all
hashed commands to be removed from the hash table. Each name is searched as if it were a command
name and added to the hash table if it is an executable command.
jobs [-lnp] [job ...]
Display information about the specified job(s); if no jobs are specified, all jobs are displayed.
The -n option causes information to be displayed only for jobs that have changed state since the
last notification. If the -l option is used, the process ID of each process in a job is also
listed. The -p option causes only the process group of each job to be printed. See “Job control”
below for the format of job and the displayed job.
kill [-s signame | -signum | -signame] { job | pid | pgrp } ...
Send the specified signal to the specified jobs, process IDs, or process groups. If no signal is
specified, the TERM signal is sent. If a job is specified, the signal is sent to the job's
process group. See “Job control” below for the format of job.
kill -l [exit-status ...]
Print the signal name corresponding to exit-status. If no arguments are specified, a list of all
the signals, their numbers, and a short description of them are printed.
let [expression ...]
Each expression is evaluated (see “Arithmetic expressions” above). If all expressions are
successfully evaluated, the exit status is 0 (1) if the last expression evaluated to non-zero
(zero). If an error occurs during the parsing or evaluation of an expression, the exit status is
greater than 1. Since expressions may need to be quoted, (( expr )) is syntactic sugar for let
"expr".
let] Internally used alias for let.
mknod [-m mode] name b|c major minor
mknod [-m mode] name p
Create a device special file. The file type may be b (block type device), c (character type
device), or p (named pipe, FIFO). The file created may be modified according to its mode (via the
-m option), major (major device number), and minor (minor device number).
See mknod(8) for further information.
print [-nprsu[n] | -R [-en]] [argument ...]
print prints its arguments on the standard output, separated by spaces and terminated with a
newline. The -n option suppresses the newline. By default, certain C escapes are translated.
These include these mentioned in “Backslash expansion” above, as well as ‘\c’, which is equivalent
to using the -n option. Backslash expansion may be inhibited with the -r option. The -s option
prints to the history file instead of standard output; the -u option prints to file descriptor n
(n defaults to 1 if omitted); and the -p option prints to the co-process (see “Co-processes”
above).
The -R option is used to emulate, to some degree, the BSD echo(1) command which does not process
‘\’ sequences unless the -e option is given. As above, the -n option suppresses the trailing
newline.
printf format [arguments ...]
Formatted output. Approximately the same as the printf(1), utility, except it uses the same
“Backslash expansion” and I/O code and does hot handle floating point as the rest of mksh. This
is not normally part of mksh; however, distributors may have added this as builtin as a speed
hack. Do not use in new code.
pwd [-LP]
Print the present working directory. If the -L option is used or if the physical option isn't set
(see the set command below), the logical path is printed (i.e. the path used to cd to the current
directory). If the -P option (physical path) is used or if the physical option is set, the path
determined from the filesystem (by following ‘..’ directories to the root directory) is printed.
read [-A | -a] [-d x] [-N z | -n z] [-p | -u[n]] [-t n] [-rs] [p ...]
Reads a line of input, separates the input into fields using the IFS parameter (see “Substitution”
above), and assigns each field to the specified parameters p. If no parameters are specified, the
REPLY parameter is used to store the result. With the -A and -a options, only no or one parameter
is accepted. If there are more parameters than fields, the extra parameters are set to the empty
string or 0; if there are more fields than parameters, the last parameter is assigned the
remaining fields (including the word separators).
The options are as follows:
-A Store the result into the parameter p (or REPLY) as array of words.
-a Store the result without word splitting into the parameter p (or REPLY) as array of
characters (wide characters if the utf8-mode option is enacted, octets otherwise).
-d x Use the first byte of x, NUL if empty, instead of the ASCII newline character as input line
delimiter.
-N z Instead of reading till end-of-line, read exactly z bytes; less if EOF or a timeout occurs.
-n z Instead of reading till end-of-line, read up to z bytes but return as soon as any bytes are
read, e.g. from a slow terminal device, or if EOF or a timeout occurs.
-p Read from the currently active co-process, see “Co-processes” above for details on this.
-u[n] Read from the file descriptor n (defaults to 0, i.e. standard input). The argument must
immediately follow the option character.
-t n Interrupt reading after n seconds (specified as positive decimal value with an optional
fractional part).
-r Normally, the ASCII backslash character escapes the special meaning of the following
character and is stripped from the input; read does not stop when encountering a backslash-
newline sequence and does not store that newline in the result. This option enables raw
mode, in which backslashes are not processed.
-s The input line is saved to the history.
If the input is a terminal, both the -N and -n options set it into raw mode; they read an entire
file if -1 is passed as z argument.
The first parameter may have a question mark and a string appended to it, in which case the string
is used as a prompt (printed to standard error before any input is read) if the input is a tty(4)
(e.g. read nfoo?'number of foos: ').
If no input is read or a timeout occurred, read exits with a non-zero status.
Another handy set of tricks: If read is run in a loop such as while read foo; do ...; done then
leading whitespace will be removed (IFS) and backslashes processed. You might want to use while
IFS= read -r foo; do ...; done for pristine I/O. Similarily, when using the -a option, use of the
-r option might be prudent; the same applies for:
find . -type f -print0 | \
while IFS= read -d '' -r filename; do
print -r -- "found <${filename#./}>"
done
The inner loop will be executed in a subshell and variable changes cannot be propagated if
executed in a pipeline:
bar | baz | while read foo; do ...; done
Use co-processes instead:
bar | baz |&
while read -p foo; do ...; done
exec 3>&p; exec 3>&-
readonly [-p] [parameter [=value] ...]
Sets the read-only attribute of the named parameters. If values are given, parameters are set to
them before setting the attribute. Once a parameter is made read-only, it cannot be unset and its
value cannot be changed.
If no parameters are specified, the names of all parameters with the read-only attribute are
printed one per line, unless the -p option is used, in which case readonly commands defining all
read-only parameters, including their values, are printed.
realpath [--] name
Prints the resolved absolute pathname corresponding to name. If name ends with a slash (‘/’),
it's also checked for existence and whether it is a directory; otherwise, realpath returns 0 if
the pathname either exists or can be created immediately, i.e. all but the last component exist
and are directories.
rename [--] from to
Renames the file from to to. Both must be complete pathnames and on the same device. This
builtin is intended for emergency situations where /bin/mv becomes unusable, and directly calls
rename(2).
return [status]
Returns from a function or . script, with exit status status. If no status is given, the exit
status of the last executed command is used. If used outside of a function or . script, it has
the same effect as exit. Note that mksh treats both profile and ENV files as . scripts, while the
original Korn shell only treats profiles as . scripts.
set [+-abCefhiklmnprsUuvXx] [+-o option] [+-A name] [--] [arg ...]
The set command can be used to set (-) or clear (+) shell options, set the positional parameters,
or set an array parameter. Options can be changed using the +-o option syntax, where option is
the long name of an option, or using the +-letter syntax, where letter is the option's single
letter name (not all options have a single letter name). The following table lists both option
letters (if they exist) and long names along with a description of what the option does:
-A name
Sets the elements of the array parameter name to arg ... If -A is used, the array is reset
(i.e. emptied) first; if +A is used, the first N elements are set (where N is the number of
arguments); the rest are left untouched.
An alternative syntax for the command set -A foo -- a b c which is compatible to GNU bash and
also supported by AT&T UNIX ksh93 is: foo=(a b c); foo+=(d e)
Another AT&T UNIX ksh93 and GNU bash extension allows specifying the indices used for arg ...
(from the above example, a b c) like this: set -A foo -- [0]=a [1]=b [2]=c or foo=([0]=a
[1]=b [2]=c) which can also be written foo=([0]=a b c) because indices are incremented
automatically.
-a | -o allexport
All new parameters are created with the export attribute.
-b | -o notify
Print job notification messages asynchronously, instead of just before the prompt. Only used
if job control is enabled (-m).
-C | -o noclobber
Prevent > redirection from overwriting existing files. Instead, >| must be used to force an
overwrite.
-e | -o errexit
Exit (after executing the ERR trap) as soon as an error occurs or a command fails (i.e. exits
with a non-zero status). This does not apply to commands whose exit status is explicitly
tested by a shell construct such as if, until, while, &&, ||, or ! statements.
-f | -o noglob
Do not expand file name patterns.
-h | -o trackall
Create tracked aliases for all executed commands (see “Aliases” above). Enabled by default
for non-interactive shells.
-i | -o interactive
The shell is an interactive shell. This option can only be used when the shell is invoked.
See above for a description of what this means.
-k | -o keyword
Parameter assignments are recognised anywhere in a command.
-l | -o login
The shell is a login shell. This option can only be used when the shell is invoked. See
above for a description of what this means.
-m | -o monitor
Enable job control (default for interactive shells).
-n | -o noexec
Do not execute any commands. Useful for checking the syntax of scripts (ignored if
interactive).
-p | -o privileged
The shell is a privileged shell. It is set automatically if, when the shell starts, the real
UID or GID does not match the effective UID (EUID) or GID (EGID), respectively. See above
for a description of what this means.
-r | -o restricted
The shell is a restricted shell. This option can only be used when the shell is invoked.
See above for a description of what this means.
-s | -o stdin
If used when the shell is invoked, commands are read from standard input. Set automatically
if the shell is invoked with no arguments.
When -s is used with the set command it causes the specified arguments to be sorted before
assigning them to the positional parameters (or to array name, if -A is used).
-U | -o utf8-mode
Enable UTF-8 support in the “Emacs editing mode” and internal string handling functions.
This flag is disabled by default, but can be enabled by setting it on the shell command line;
is enabled automatically for interactive shells if requested at compile time, your system
supports setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "") and optionally nl_langinfo(CODESET), or the LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE, or LANG environment variables, and at least one of these returns something that
matches “UTF-8” or “utf8” case-insensitively; for direct builtin calls depending on the
aforementioned environment variables; or for stdin or scripts, if the input begins with a
UTF-8 Byte Order Mark.
-u | -o nounset
Referencing of an unset parameter, other than “$@” or “$*”, is treated as an error, unless
one of the ‘-’, ‘+’, or ‘=’ modifiers is used.
-v | -o verbose
Write shell input to standard error as it is read.
-X | -o markdirs
Mark directories with a trailing ‘/’ during file name generation.
-x | -o xtrace
Print command trees when they are executed, preceded by the value of PS4.
-o bgnice
Background jobs are run with lower priority.
-o braceexpand
Enable brace expansion (a.k.a. alternation). This is enabled by default. If disabled, tilde
expansion after an equals sign is disabled as a side effect.
-o emacs
Enable BRL emacs-like command-line editing (interactive shells only); see “Emacs editing
mode”.
-o gmacs
Enable gmacs-like command-line editing (interactive shells only). Currently identical to
emacs editing except that transpose-chars (^T) acts slightly differently.
-o ignoreeof
The shell will not (easily) exit when end-of-file is read; exit must be used. To avoid
infinite loops, the shell will exit if EOF is read 13 times in a row.
-o nohup
Do not kill running jobs with a SIGHUP signal when a login shell exits. Currently set by
default, but this may change in the future to be compatible with AT&T UNIX ksh, which doesn't
have this option, but does send the SIGHUP signal.
-o nolog
No effect. In the original Korn shell, this prevents function definitions from being stored
in the history file.
-o physical
Causes the cd and pwd commands to use “physical” (i.e. the filesystem's) ‘..’ directories
instead of “logical” directories (i.e. the shell handles ‘..’, which allows the user to be
oblivious of symbolic links to directories). Clear by default. Note that setting this
option does not affect the current value of the PWD parameter; only the cd command changes
PWD. See the cd and pwd commands above for more details.
-o pipefail
Make the exit status of a pipeline (before logically complementing) the rightmost non-zero
errorlevel, or zero if all commands exited with zero.
-o posix
Enable a somewhat more POSIXish mode. As a side effect, setting this flag turns off
braceexpand mode, which can be turned back on manually, and sh mode.
-o sh
Enable /bin/sh (kludge) mode. Automatically enabled if the basename of the shell invocation
begins with “sh” and this autodetection feature is compiled in (not in MirBSD). As a side
effect, setting this flag turns off braceexpand mode, which can be turned back on manually,
and posix mode.
-o vi
Enable vi(1)-like command-line editing (interactive shells only).
-o vi-esccomplete
In vi command-line editing, do command and file name completion when escape (^[) is entered
in command mode.
-o vi-tabcomplete
In vi command-line editing, do command and file name completion when tab (^I) is entered in
insert mode. This is the default.
-o viraw
No effect. In the original Korn shell, unless viraw was set, the vi command-line mode would
let the tty(4) driver do the work until ESC (^[) was entered. mksh is always in viraw mode.
These options can also be used upon invocation of the shell. The current set of options (with
single letter names) can be found in the parameter ‘$-’. set -o with no option name will list all
the options and whether each is on or off; set +o will print the long names of all options that
are currently on.
Remaining arguments, if any, are positional parameters and are assigned, in order, to the
positional parameters (i.e. $1, $2, etc.). If options end with ‘--’ and there are no remaining
arguments, all positional parameters are cleared. If no options or arguments are given, the
values of all names are printed. For unknown historical reasons, a lone ‘-’ option is treated
specially – it clears both the -v and -x options.
shift [number]
The positional parameters number+1, number+2, etc. are renamed to ‘1’, ‘2’, etc. number defaults
to 1.
sleep seconds
Suspends execution for a minimum of the seconds specified as positive decimal value with an
optional fractional part. Signal delivery may continue execution earlier.
source file [arg ...]
Like . (“dot”), except that the current working directory is appended to the PATH in GNU bash and
mksh. In ksh93 and mksh, this is implemented as a shell alias instead of a builtin.
test expression
[ expression ]
test evaluates the expression and returns zero status if true, 1 if false, or greater than 1 if
there was an error. It is normally used as the condition command of if and while statements.
Symbolic links are followed for all file expressions except -h and -L.
The following basic expressions are available:
-a file file exists.
-b file file is a block special device.
-c file file is a character special device.
-d file file is a directory.
-e file file exists.
-f file file is a regular file.
-G file file's group is the shell's effective group ID.
-g file file's mode has the setgid bit set.
-H file file is a context dependent directory (only useful on HP-UX).
-h file file is a symbolic link.
-k file file's mode has the sticky(8) bit set.
-L file file is a symbolic link.
-O file file's owner is the shell's effective user ID.
-o option Shell option is set (see the set command above for a list of options). As a
non-standard extension, if the option starts with a ‘!’, the test is negated;
the test always fails if option doesn't exist (so [ -o foo -o -o !foo ] returns
true if and only if option foo exists). The same can be achieved with [ -o
?foo ] like in AT&T UNIX ksh93. option can also be the short flag led by
either ‘-’ or ‘+’ (no logical negation), for example ‘-x’ or ‘+x’ instead of
‘xtrace’.
-p file file is a named pipe (FIFO).
-r file file exists and is readable.
-S file file is a unix(4)-domain socket.
-s file file is not empty.
-t fd File descriptor fd is a tty(4) device.
-u file file's mode has the setuid bit set.
-w file file exists and is writable.
-x file file exists and is executable.
file1 -nt file2 file1 is newer than file2 or file1 exists and file2 does not.
file1 -ot file2 file1 is older than file2 or file2 exists and file1 does not.
file1 -ef file2 file1 is the same file as file2.
string string has non-zero length.
-n string string is not empty.
-z string string is empty.
string = string Strings are equal.
string == string Strings are equal.
string > string First string operand is greater than second string operand.
string < string First string operand is less than second string operand.
string != string Strings are not equal.
number -eq number Numbers compare equal.
number -ne number Numbers compare not equal.
number -ge number Numbers compare greater than or equal.
number -gt number Numbers compare greater than.
number -le number Numbers compare less than or equal.
number -lt number Numbers compare less than.
The above basic expressions, in which unary operators have precedence over binary operators, may
be combined with the following operators (listed in increasing order of precedence):
expr -o expr Logical OR.
expr -a expr Logical AND.
! expr Logical NOT.
( expr ) Grouping.
Note that a number actually may be an arithmetic expression, such as a mathematical term or the
name of an integer variable:
x=1; [ "x" -eq 1 ] evaluates to true
Note that some special rules are applied (courtesy of POSIX) if the number of arguments to test or
inside the brackets [ ... ] is less than five: if leading ‘!’ arguments can be stripped such that
only one to three arguments remain, then the lowered comparison is executed; (thanks to XSI)
parentheses \( ... \) lower four- and three-argument forms to two- and one-argument forms,
respectively; three-argument forms ultimately prefer binary operations, followed by negation and
parenthesis lowering; two- and four-argument forms prefer negation followed by parenthesis; the
one-argument form always implies -n.
Note: A common mistake is to use “if [ $foo = bar ]” which fails if parameter “foo” is NULL or
unset, if it has embedded spaces (i.e. IFS octets), or if it is a unary operator like ‘!’ or ‘-n’.
Use tests like “if [ x"$foo" = x"bar" ]” instead, or the double-bracket operator “if [[ $foo = bar
]]” or, to avoid pattern matching (see [[ above): “if [[ $foo = "$bar" ]]”
The [[ ... ]] construct is not only more secure to use but also often faster.
time [-p] [pipeline]
If a pipeline is given, the times used to execute the pipeline are reported. If no pipeline is
given, then the user and system time used by the shell itself, and all the commands it has run
since it was started, are reported. The times reported are the real time (elapsed time from start
to finish), the user CPU time (time spent running in user mode), and the system CPU time (time
spent running in kernel mode). Times are reported to standard error; the format of the output is:
0m0.00s real 0m0.00s user 0m0.00s system
If the -p option is given the output is slightly longer:
real 0.00
user 0.00
sys 0.00
It is an error to specify the -p option unless pipeline is a simple command.
Simple redirections of standard error do not affect the output of the time command:
$ time sleep 1 2>afile
$ { time sleep 1; } 2>afile
Times for the first command do not go to “afile”, but those of the second command do.
times Print the accumulated user and system times used both by the shell and by processes that the shell
started which have exited. The format of the output is:
0m0.00s 0m0.00s
0m0.00s 0m0.00s
trap [handler signal ...]
Sets a trap handler that is to be executed when any of the specified signals are received.
handler is either a NULL string, indicating the signals are to be ignored, a minus sign (‘-’),
indicating that the default action is to be taken for the signals (see signal(3)), or a string
containing shell commands to be evaluated and executed at the first opportunity (i.e. when the
current command completes, or before printing the next PS1 prompt) after receipt of one of the
signals. signal is the name of a signal (e.g. PIPE or ALRM) or the number of the signal (see the
kill -l command above).
There are two special signals: EXIT (also known as 0) which is executed when the shell is about to
exit, and ERR, which is executed after an error occurs (an error is something that would cause the
shell to exit if the -e or errexit option were set – see the set command above). EXIT handlers
are executed in the environment of the last executed command. Note that for non-interactive
shells, the trap handler cannot be changed for signals that were ignored when the shell started.
With no arguments, trap lists, as a series of trap commands, the current state of the traps that
have been set since the shell started. Note that the output of trap cannot be usefully piped to
another process (an artifact of the fact that traps are cleared when subprocesses are created).
The original Korn shell's DEBUG trap and the handling of ERR and EXIT traps in functions are not
yet implemented.
true A command that exits with a zero value.
global [[+-alpnrtUux] [-L[n]] [-R[n]] [-Z[n]] [-i[n]] | -f [-tux]] [name [=value] ...]
typeset [[+-alpnrtUux] [-LRZ[n]] [-i[n]] | -f [-tux]] [name [=value] ...]
Display or set parameter attributes. With no name arguments, parameter attributes are displayed;
if no options are used, the current attributes of all parameters are printed as typeset commands;
if an option is given (or ‘-’ with no option letter), all parameters and their values with the
specified attributes are printed; if options are introduced with ‘+’, parameter values are not
printed.
If name arguments are given, the attributes of the named parameters are set (-) or cleared (+).
Values for parameters may optionally be specified. For name[*], the change affects the entire
array, and no value may be specified.
If typeset is used inside a function, any parameters specified are localised. This is not done by
the otherwise identical global. Note: This means that mksh 's global command is not equivalent to
other programming languages' as it does not allow a function called from another function to
access a parameter at truly global scope, but only prevents putting an accessed one into local
scope.
When -f is used, typeset operates on the attributes of functions. As with parameters, if no name
arguments are given, functions are listed with their values (i.e. definitions) unless options are
introduced with ‘+’, in which case only the function names are reported.
-a Indexed array attribute.
-f Function mode. Display or set functions and their attributes, instead of parameters.
-i[n] Integer attribute. n specifies the base to use when displaying the integer (if not
specified, the base given in the first assignment is used). Parameters with this
attribute may be assigned values containing arithmetic expressions.
-L[n] Left justify attribute. n specifies the field width. If n is not specified, the current
width of a parameter (or the width of its first assigned value) is used. Leading
whitespace (and zeros, if used with the -Z option) is stripped. If necessary, values are
either truncated or space padded to fit the field width.
-l Lower case attribute. All upper case characters in values are converted to lower case.
(In the original Korn shell, this parameter meant “long integer” when used with the -i
option.)
-n Create a bound variable (name reference): any access to the variable name will access the
variable value in the current scope (this is different from AT&T UNIX ksh93!) instead.
Also different from AT&T UNIX ksh93 is that value is lazily evaluated at the time name is
accessed. This can be used by functions to access variables whose names are passed as
parametres, instead of using eval.
-p Print complete typeset commands that can be used to re-create the attributes and values of
parameters.
-R[n] Right justify attribute. n specifies the field width. If n is not specified, the current
width of a parameter (or the width of its first assigned value) is used. Trailing
whitespace is stripped. If necessary, values are either stripped of leading characters or
space padded to make them fit the field width.
-r Read-only attribute. Parameters with this attribute may not be assigned to or unset.
Once this attribute is set, it cannot be turned off.
-t Tag attribute. Has no meaning to the shell; provided for application use.
For functions, -t is the trace attribute. When functions with the trace attribute are
executed, the xtrace (-x) shell option is temporarily turned on.
-U Unsigned integer attribute. Integers are printed as unsigned values (combine with the -i
option). This option is not in the original Korn shell.
-u Upper case attribute. All lower case characters in values are converted to upper case.
(In the original Korn shell, this parameter meant “unsigned integer” when used with the -i
option which meant upper case letters would never be used for bases greater than 10. See
the -U option.)
For functions, -u is the undefined attribute. See “Functions” above for the implications
of this.
-x Export attribute. Parameters (or functions) are placed in the environment of any executed
commands. Exported functions are not yet implemented.
-Z[n] Zero fill attribute. If not combined with -L, this is the same as -R, except zero padding
is used instead of space padding. For integers, the number instead of the base is padded.
If any of the -i, -L, -l, -R, -U, -u, or -Z options are changed, all others from this set are
cleared, unless they are also given on the same command line.
ulimit [-aBCcdefHiLlMmnOPpqrSsTtVvw] [value]
Display or set process limits. If no options are used, the file size limit (-f) is assumed.
value, if specified, may be either an arithmetic expression or the word “unlimited”. The limits
affect the shell and any processes created by the shell after a limit is imposed. Note that some
systems may not allow limits to be increased once they are set. Also note that the types of
limits available are system dependent – some systems have only the -f limit.
-a Display all limits; unless -H is used, soft limits are displayed.
-B n Set the socket buffer size to n kibibytes.
-C n Set the number of cached threads to n.
-c n Impose a size limit of n blocks on the size of core dumps.
-d n Impose a size limit of n kibibytes on the size of the data area.
-e n Set the maximum niceness to n.
-f n Impose a size limit of n blocks on files written by the shell and its child processes
(files of any size may be read).
-H Set the hard limit only (the default is to set both hard and soft limits).
-i n Set the number of pending signals to n.
-L n Control flocks; documentation is missing.
-l n Impose a limit of n kibibytes on the amount of locked (wired) physical memory.
-M n Set the AIO locked memory to n kibibytes.
-m n Impose a limit of n kibibytes on the amount of physical memory used.
-n n Impose a limit of n file descriptors that can be open at once.
-O n Set the number of AIO operations to n.
-P n Limit the number of threads per process to n.
-p n Impose a limit of n processes that can be run by the user at any one time.
-q n Limit the size of POSIX message queues to n bytes.
-r n Set the maximum real-time priority to n.
-S Set the soft limit only (the default is to set both hard and soft limits).
-s n Impose a size limit of n kibibytes on the size of the stack area.
-T n Impose a time limit of n real seconds to be used by each process.
-t n Impose a time limit of n CPU seconds spent in user mode to be used by each process.
-V n Set the number of vnode monitors on Haiku to n.
-v n Impose a limit of n kibibytes on the amount of virtual memory (address space) used.
-w n Impose a limit of n kibibytes on the amount of swap space used.
As far as ulimit is concerned, a block is 512 bytes.
umask [-S] [mask]
Display or set the file permission creation mask, or umask (see umask(2)). If the -S option is
used, the mask displayed or set is symbolic; otherwise, it is an octal number.
Symbolic masks are like those used by chmod(1). When used, they describe what permissions may be
made available (as opposed to octal masks in which a set bit means the corresponding bit is to be
cleared). For example, “ug=rwx,o=” sets the mask so files will not be readable, writable, or
executable by “others”, and is equivalent (on most systems) to the octal mask “007”.
unalias [-adt] [name ...]
The aliases for the given names are removed. If the -a option is used, all aliases are removed.
If the -t or -d options are used, the indicated operations are carried out on tracked or directory
aliases, respectively.
unset [-fv] parameter ...
Unset the named parameters (-v, the default) or functions (-f). With parameter[*], attributes are
kept, only values are unset.
The exit status is non-zero if any of the parameters have the read-only attribute set, zero
otherwise.
wait [job ...]
Wait for the specified job(s) to finish. The exit status of wait is that of the last specified
job; if the last job is killed by a signal, the exit status is 128 + the number of the signal (see
kill -l exit-status above); if the last specified job can't be found (because it never existed, or
had already finished), the exit status of wait is 127. See “Job control” below for the format of
job. wait will return if a signal for which a trap has been set is received, or if a SIGHUP,
SIGINT, or SIGQUIT signal is received.
If no jobs are specified, wait waits for all currently running jobs (if any) to finish and exits
with a zero status. If job monitoring is enabled, the completion status of jobs is printed (this
is not the case when jobs are explicitly specified).
whence [-pv] [name ...]
For each name, the type of command is listed (reserved word, built-in, alias, function, tracked
alias, or executable). If the -p option is used, a path search is performed even if name is a
reserved word, alias, etc. Without the -v option, whence is similar to command -v except that
whence will find reserved words and won't print aliases as alias commands. With the -v option,
whence is the same as command -V. Note that for whence, the -p option does not affect the search
path used, as it does for command. If the type of one or more of the names could not be
determined, the exit status is non-zero.
Job control
Job control refers to the shell's ability to monitor and control jobs which are processes or groups of
processes created for commands or pipelines. At a minimum, the shell keeps track of the status of the
background (i.e. asynchronous) jobs that currently exist; this information can be displayed using the
jobs commands. If job control is fully enabled (using set -m or set -o monitor), as it is for
interactive shells, the processes of a job are placed in their own process group. Foreground jobs can be
stopped by typing the suspend character from the terminal (normally ^Z), jobs can be restarted in either
the foreground or background using the fg and bg commands, and the state of the terminal is saved or
restored when a foreground job is stopped or restarted, respectively.
Note that only commands that create processes (e.g. asynchronous commands, subshell commands, and non-
built-in, non-function commands) can be stopped; commands like read cannot be.
When a job is created, it is assigned a job number. For interactive shells, this number is printed
inside “[..]”, followed by the process IDs of the processes in the job when an asynchronous command is
run. A job may be referred to in the bg, fg, jobs, kill, and wait commands either by the process ID of
the last process in the command pipeline (as stored in the $! parameter) or by prefixing the job number
with a percent sign (‘%’). Other percent sequences can also be used to refer to jobs:
%+ | %% | % The most recently stopped job, or, if there are no stopped jobs, the oldest running job.
%- The job that would be the %+ job if the latter did not exist.
%n The job with job number n.
%?string The job with its command containing the string string (an error occurs if multiple jobs
are matched).
%string The job with its command starting with the string string (an error occurs if multiple jobs
are matched).
When a job changes state (e.g. a background job finishes or foreground job is stopped), the shell prints
the following status information:
[number] flag status command
where...
number is the job number of the job;
flag is the ‘+’ or ‘-’ character if the job is the %+ or %- job, respectively, or space if it is
neither;
status indicates the current state of the job and can be:
Done [number]
The job exited. number is the exit status of the job which is omitted if the status
is zero.
Running The job has neither stopped nor exited (note that running does not necessarily mean
consuming CPU time – the process could be blocked waiting for some event).
Stopped [signal]
The job was stopped by the indicated signal (if no signal is given, the job was
stopped by SIGTSTP).
signal-description [“core dumped”]
The job was killed by a signal (e.g. memory fault, hangup); use kill -l for a list of
signal descriptions. The “core dumped” message indicates the process created a core
file.
command is the command that created the process. If there are multiple processes in the job, each
process will have a line showing its command and possibly its status, if it is different from
the status of the previous process.
When an attempt is made to exit the shell while there are jobs in the stopped state, the shell warns the
user that there are stopped jobs and does not exit. If another attempt is immediately made to exit the
shell, the stopped jobs are sent a SIGHUP signal and the shell exits. Similarly, if the nohup option is
not set and there are running jobs when an attempt is made to exit a login shell, the shell warns the
user and does not exit. If another attempt is immediately made to exit the shell, the running jobs are
sent a SIGHUP signal and the shell exits.
Interactive input line editing
The shell supports three modes of reading command lines from a tty(4) in an interactive session,
controlled by the emacs, gmacs, and vi options (at most one of these can be set at once). The default is
emacs. Editing modes can be set explicitly using the set built-in. If none of these options are
enabled, the shell simply reads lines using the normal tty(4) driver. If the emacs or gmacs option is
set, the shell allows emacs-like editing of the command; similarly, if the vi option is set, the shell
allows vi-like editing of the command. These modes are described in detail in the following sections.
In these editing modes, if a line is longer than the screen width (see the COLUMNS parameter), a ‘>’,
‘+’, or ‘<’ character is displayed in the last column indicating that there are more characters after,
before and after, or before the current position, respectively. The line is scrolled horizontally as
necessary.
Completed lines are pushed into the history, unless they begin with an IFS octet or IFS white space, or
are the same as the previous line.
Emacs editing mode
When the emacs option is set, interactive input line editing is enabled. Warning: This mode is slightly
different from the emacs mode in the original Korn shell. In this mode, various editing commands
(typically bound to one or more control characters) cause immediate actions without waiting for a
newline. Several editing commands are bound to particular control characters when the shell is invoked;
these bindings can be changed using the bind command.
The following is a list of available editing commands. Each description starts with the name of the
command, suffixed with a colon; an [n] (if the command can be prefixed with a count); and any keys the
command is bound to by default, written using caret notation e.g. the ASCII ESC character is written as
^[. These control sequences are not case sensitive. A count prefix for a command is entered using the
sequence ^[n, where n is a sequence of 1 or more digits. Unless otherwise specified, if a count is
omitted, it defaults to 1.
Note that editing command names are used only with the bind command. Furthermore, many editing commands
are useful only on terminals with a visible cursor. The default bindings were chosen to resemble
corresponding Emacs key bindings. The user's tty(4) characters (e.g. ERASE) are bound to reasonable
substitutes and override the default bindings.
abort: ^C, ^G
Abort the current command, empty the line buffer and set the exit state to interrupted.
auto-insert: [n]
Simply causes the character to appear as literal input. Most ordinary characters are bound to
this.
backward-char: [n] ^B, ^XD, ANSI-CurLeft
Moves the cursor backward n characters.
backward-word: [n] ^[b, ANSI-Ctrl-CurLeft, ANSI-Alt-CurLeft
Moves the cursor backward to the beginning of the word; words consist of alphanumerics,
underscore (‘_’), and dollar sign (‘$’) characters.
beginning-of-history: ^[<
Moves to the beginning of the history.
beginning-of-line: ^A, ANSI-Home
Moves the cursor to the beginning of the edited input line.
capitalise-word: [n] ^[C, ^[c
Uppercase the first character in the next n words, leaving the cursor past the end of the last
word.
clear-screen: ^[^L
Prints a compile-time configurable sequence to clear the screen and home the cursor, redraws the
entire prompt and the currently edited input line. The default sequence works for almost all
standard terminals.
comment: ^[#
If the current line does not begin with a comment character, one is added at the beginning of the
line and the line is entered (as if return had been pressed); otherwise, the existing comment
characters are removed and the cursor is placed at the beginning of the line.
complete: ^[^[
Automatically completes as much as is unique of the command name or the file name containing the
cursor. If the entire remaining command or file name is unique, a space is printed after its
completion, unless it is a directory name in which case ‘/’ is appended. If there is no command
or file name with the current partial word as its prefix, a bell character is output (usually
causing a beep to be sounded).
complete-command: ^X^[
Automatically completes as much as is unique of the command name having the partial word up to
the cursor as its prefix, as in the complete command above.
complete-file: ^[^X
Automatically completes as much as is unique of the file name having the partial word up to the
cursor as its prefix, as in the complete command described above.
complete-list: ^I, ^[=
Complete as much as is possible of the current word, and list the possible completions for it.
If only one completion is possible, match as in the complete command above. Note that ^I is
usually generated by the TAB (tabulator) key.
delete-char-backward: [n] ERASE, ^?, ^H
Deletes n characters before the cursor.
delete-char-forward: [n] ANSI-Del
Deletes n characters after the cursor.
delete-word-backward: [n] WERASE, ^[^?, ^[^H, ^[h
Deletes n words before the cursor.
delete-word-forward: [n] ^[d
Deletes characters after the cursor up to the end of n words.
down-history: [n] ^N, ^XB, ANSI-CurDown
Scrolls the history buffer forward n lines (later). Each input line originally starts just after
the last entry in the history buffer, so down-history is not useful until either search-history,
search-history-up or up-history has been performed.
downcase-word: [n] ^[L, ^[l
Lowercases the next n words.
edit-line: [n] ^Xe
Edit line n or the current line, if not specified, interactively. The actual command executed is
fc -e ${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vi}} n.
end-of-history: ^[>
Moves to the end of the history.
end-of-line: ^E, ANSI-End
Moves the cursor to the end of the input line.
eot: ^_
Acts as an end-of-file; this is useful because edit-mode input disables normal terminal input
canonicalization.
eot-or-delete: [n] ^D
Acts as eot if alone on a line; otherwise acts as delete-char-forward.
error: (not bound)
Error (ring the bell).
exchange-point-and-mark: ^X^X
Places the cursor where the mark is and sets the mark to where the cursor was.
expand-file: ^[*
Appends a ‘*’ to the current word and replaces the word with the result of performing file
globbing on the word. If no files match the pattern, the bell is rung.
forward-char: [n] ^F, ^XC, ANSI-CurRight
Moves the cursor forward n characters.
forward-word: [n] ^[f, ANSI-Ctrl-CurRight, ANSI-Alt-CurRight
Moves the cursor forward to the end of the nth word.
goto-history: [n] ^[g
Goes to history number n.
kill-line: KILL
Deletes the entire input line.
kill-region: ^W
Deletes the input between the cursor and the mark.
kill-to-eol: [n] ^K
Deletes the input from the cursor to the end of the line if n is not specified; otherwise deletes
characters between the cursor and column n.
list: ^[?
Prints a sorted, columnated list of command names or file names (if any) that can complete the
partial word containing the cursor. Directory names have ‘/’ appended to them.
list-command: ^X?
Prints a sorted, columnated list of command names (if any) that can complete the partial word
containing the cursor.
list-file: ^X^Y
Prints a sorted, columnated list of file names (if any) that can complete the partial word
containing the cursor. File type indicators are appended as described under list above.
newline: ^J, ^M
Causes the current input line to be processed by the shell. The current cursor position may be
anywhere on the line.
newline-and-next: ^O
Causes the current input line to be processed by the shell, and the next line from history
becomes the current line. This is only useful after an up-history, search-history or
search-history-up.
no-op: QUIT
This does nothing.
prefix-1: ^[
Introduces a 2-character command sequence.
prefix-2: ^X, ^[[, ^[O
Introduces a 2-character command sequence.
prev-hist-word: [n] ^[., ^[_
The last word, or, if given, the nth word (zero-based) of the previous (on repeated execution,
second-last, third-last, etc.) command is inserted at the cursor. Use of this editing command
trashes the mark.
quote: ^^, ^V
The following character is taken literally rather than as an editing command.
redraw: ^L
Reprints the last line of the prompt string and the current input line on a new line.
search-character-backward: [n] ^[^]
Search backward in the current line for the nth occurrence of the next character typed.
search-character-forward: [n] ^]
Search forward in the current line for the nth occurrence of the next character typed.
search-history: ^R
Enter incremental search mode. The internal history list is searched backwards for commands
matching the input. An initial ‘^’ in the search string anchors the search. The escape key will
leave search mode. Other commands, including sequences of escape as prefix-1 followed by a
prefix-1 or prefix-2 key will be executed after leaving search mode. The abort (^G) command will
restore the input line before search started. Successive search-history commands continue
searching backward to the next previous occurrence of the pattern. The history buffer retains
only a finite number of lines; the oldest are discarded as necessary.
search-history-up: ANSI-PgUp
Search backwards through the history buffer for commands whose beginning match the portion of the
input line before the cursor. When used on an empty line, this has the same effect as
up-history.
search-history-down: ANSI-PgDn
Search forwards through the history buffer for commands whose beginning match the portion of the
input line before the cursor. When used on an empty line, this has the same effect as
down-history. This is only useful after an up-history, search-history or search-history-up.
set-mark-command: ^[<space>
Set the mark at the cursor position.
transpose-chars: ^T
If at the end of line, or if the gmacs option is set, this exchanges the two previous characters;
otherwise, it exchanges the previous and current characters and moves the cursor one character to
the right.
up-history: [n] ^P, ^XA, ANSI-CurUp
Scrolls the history buffer backward n lines (earlier).
upcase-word: [n] ^[U, ^[u
Uppercase the next n words.
version: ^[^V
Display the version of mksh. The current edit buffer is restored as soon as a key is pressed.
The restoring keypress is processed, unless it is a space.
yank: ^Y
Inserts the most recently killed text string at the current cursor position.
yank-pop: ^[y
Immediately after a yank, replaces the inserted text string with the next previously killed text
string.
Vi editing mode
Note: The vi command-line editing mode is orphaned, yet still functional.
The vi command-line editor in mksh has basically the same commands as the vi(1) editor with the following
exceptions:
• You start out in insert mode.
• There are file name and command completion commands: =, \, *, ^X, ^E, ^F, and, optionally, <tab> and
<esc>.
• The _ command is different (in mksh, it is the last argument command; in vi(1) it goes to the start
of the current line).
• The / and G commands move in the opposite direction to the j command.
• Commands which don't make sense in a single line editor are not available (e.g. screen movement
commands and ex(1)-style colon (:) commands).
Like vi(1), there are two modes: “insert” mode and “command” mode. In insert mode, most characters are
simply put in the buffer at the current cursor position as they are typed; however, some characters are
treated specially. In particular, the following characters are taken from current tty(4) settings (see
stty(1)) and have their usual meaning (normal values are in parentheses): kill (^U), erase (^?), werase
(^W), eof (^D), intr (^C), and quit (^\). In addition to the above, the following characters are also
treated specially in insert mode:
^E Command and file name enumeration (see below).
^F Command and file name completion (see below). If used twice in a row, the list of possible
completions is displayed; if used a third time, the completion is undone.
^H Erases previous character.
^J | ^M End of line. The current line is read, parsed, and executed by the shell.
^V Literal next. The next character typed is not treated specially (can be used to insert the
characters being described here).
^X Command and file name expansion (see below).
<esc> Puts the editor in command mode (see below).
<tab> Optional file name and command completion (see ^F above), enabled with set -o vi-tabcomplete.
In command mode, each character is interpreted as a command. Characters that don't correspond to
commands, are illegal combinations of commands, or are commands that can't be carried out, all cause
beeps. In the following command descriptions, an [n] indicates the command may be prefixed by a number
(e.g. 10l moves right 10 characters); if no number prefix is used, n is assumed to be 1 unless otherwise
specified. The term “current position” refers to the position between the cursor and the character
preceding the cursor. A “word” is a sequence of letters, digits, and underscore characters or a sequence
of non-letter, non-digit, non-underscore, and non-whitespace characters (e.g. “ab2*&^” contains two
words) and a “big-word” is a sequence of non-whitespace characters.
Special mksh vi commands:
The following commands are not in, or are different from, the normal vi file editor:
[n]_ Insert a space followed by the nth big-word from the last command in the history at the
current position and enter insert mode; if n is not specified, the last word is inserted.
# Insert the comment character (‘#’) at the start of the current line and return the line to
the shell (equivalent to I#^J).
[n]g Like G, except if n is not specified, it goes to the most recent remembered line.
[n]v Edit line n using the vi(1) editor; if n is not specified, the current line is edited. The
actual command executed is fc -e ${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vi}} n.
* and ^X Command or file name expansion is applied to the current big-word (with an appended ‘*’ if
the word contains no file globbing characters) – the big-word is replaced with the resulting
words. If the current big-word is the first on the line or follows one of the characters
‘;’, ‘|’, ‘&’, ‘(’, or ‘)’, and does not contain a slash (‘/’), then command expansion is
done; otherwise file name expansion is done. Command expansion will match the big-word
against all aliases, functions, and built-in commands as well as any executable files found
by searching the directories in the PATH parameter. File name expansion matches the big-word
against the files in the current directory. After expansion, the cursor is placed just past
the last word and the editor is in insert mode.
[n]\, [n]^F, [n]<tab>, and [n]<esc>
Command/file name completion. Replace the current big-word with the longest unique match
obtained after performing command and file name expansion. <tab> is only recognised if the
vi-tabcomplete option is set, while <esc> is only recognised if the vi-esccomplete option is
set (see set -o). If n is specified, the nth possible completion is selected (as reported by
the command/file name enumeration command).
= and ^E Command/file name enumeration. List all the commands or files that match the current big-
word.
^V Display the version of mksh. The current edit buffer is restored as soon as a key is
pressed. The restoring keypress is ignored.
@c Macro expansion. Execute the commands found in the alias c.
Intra-line movement commands:
[n]h and [n]^H
Move left n characters.
[n]l and [n]<space>
Move right n characters.
0 Move to column 0.
^ Move to the first non-whitespace character.
[n]| Move to column n.
$ Move to the last character.
[n]b Move back n words.
[n]B Move back n big-words.
[n]e Move forward to the end of the word, n times.
[n]E Move forward to the end of the big-word, n times.
[n]w Move forward n words.
[n]W Move forward n big-words.
% Find match. The editor looks forward for the nearest parenthesis, bracket, or brace and then
moves the cursor to the matching parenthesis, bracket, or brace.
[n]fc Move forward to the nth occurrence of the character c.
[n]Fc Move backward to the nth occurrence of the character c.
[n]tc Move forward to just before the nth occurrence of the character c.
[n]Tc Move backward to just before the nth occurrence of the character c.
[n]; Repeats the last f, F, t, or T command.
[n], Repeats the last f, F, t, or T command, but moves in the opposite direction.
Inter-line movement commands:
[n]j, [n]+, and [n]^N
Move to the nth next line in the history.
[n]k, [n]-, and [n]^P
Move to the nth previous line in the history.
[n]G Move to line n in the history; if n is not specified, the number of the first remembered line is
used.
[n]g Like G, except if n is not specified, it goes to the most recent remembered line.
[n]/string
Search backward through the history for the nth line containing string; if string starts with
‘^’, the remainder of the string must appear at the start of the history line for it to match.
[n]?string
Same as /, except it searches forward through the history.
[n]n Search for the nth occurrence of the last search string; the direction of the search is the same
as the last search.
[n]N Search for the nth occurrence of the last search string; the direction of the search is the
opposite of the last search.
ANSI-CurUp
Take the characters from the beginning of the line to the current cursor position as search
string and do a backwards history search for lines beginning with this string; keep the cursor
position. This works only in insert mode and keeps it enabled.
Edit commands
[n]a Append text n times; goes into insert mode just after the current position. The append is only
replicated if command mode is re-entered i.e. <esc> is used.
[n]A Same as a, except it appends at the end of the line.
[n]i Insert text n times; goes into insert mode at the current position. The insertion is only
replicated if command mode is re-entered i.e. <esc> is used.
[n]I Same as i, except the insertion is done just before the first non-blank character.
[n]s Substitute the next n characters (i.e. delete the characters and go into insert mode).
S Substitute whole line. All characters from the first non-blank character to the end of the line
are deleted and insert mode is entered.
[n]cmove-cmd
Change from the current position to the position resulting from n move-cmds (i.e. delete the
indicated region and go into insert mode); if move-cmd is c, the line starting from the first
non-blank character is changed.
C Change from the current position to the end of the line (i.e. delete to the end of the line and
go into insert mode).
[n]x Delete the next n characters.
[n]X Delete the previous n characters.
D Delete to the end of the line.
[n]dmove-cmd
Delete from the current position to the position resulting from n move-cmds; move-cmd is a
movement command (see above) or d, in which case the current line is deleted.
[n]rc Replace the next n characters with the character c.
[n]R Replace. Enter insert mode but overwrite existing characters instead of inserting before
existing characters. The replacement is repeated n times.
[n]~ Change the case of the next n characters.
[n]ymove-cmd
Yank from the current position to the position resulting from n move-cmds into the yank buffer;
if move-cmd is y, the whole line is yanked.
Y Yank from the current position to the end of the line.
[n]p Paste the contents of the yank buffer just after the current position, n times.
[n]P Same as p, except the buffer is pasted at the current position.
Miscellaneous vi commands
^J and ^M
The current line is read, parsed, and executed by the shell.
^L and ^R
Redraw the current line.
[n]. Redo the last edit command n times.
u Undo the last edit command.
U Undo all changes that have been made to the current line.
intr and quit
The interrupt and quit terminal characters cause the current line to be deleted and a new prompt
to be printed.
FILES
~/.mkshrc User mkshrc profile (non-privileged interactive shells); see “Startup files.” The
location can be changed at compile time (for embedded systems); AOSP Android builds
use /system/etc/mkshrc.
~/.profile User profile (non-privileged login shells); see “Startup files” near the top of this
manual.
/etc/profile System profile (login shells); see “Startup files.”
/etc/shells Shell database.
/etc/suid_profile Suid profile (privileged shells); see “Startup files.”
Note: On Android, /system/etc/ contains the system and suid profile.
SEE ALSO
awk(1), cat(1), ed(1), getopt(1), sed(1), sh(1), stty(1), dup(2), execve(2), getgid(2), getuid(2),
mknod(2), mkfifo(2), open(2), pipe(2), rename(2), wait(2), getopt(3), nl_langinfo(3), setlocale(3),
signal(3), system(3), tty(4), shells(5), environ(7), script(7), utf-8(7), mknod(8)
http://docsrv.sco.com:507/en/man/html.C/sh.C.html
https://www.mirbsd.org/ksh-chan.htm
Morris Bolsky, The KornShell Command and Programming Language, Prentice Hall PTR, xvi + 356 pages, 1989,
ISBN 978-0-13-516972-8 (0-13-516972-0).
Morris I. Bolsky and David G. Korn, The New KornShell Command and Programming Language (2nd Edition),
Prentice Hall PTR, xvi + 400 pages, 1995, ISBN 978-0-13-182700-4 (0-13-182700-6).
Stephen G. Kochan and Patrick H. Wood, UNIX Shell Programming, Hayden, Revised Edition, xi + 490 pages,
1990, ISBN 978-0-672-48448-3 (0-672-48448-X).
IEEE Inc., IEEE Standard for Information Technology – Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), IEEE
Press, Part 2: Shell and Utilities, xvii + 1195 pages, 1993, ISBN 978-1-55937-255-8 (1-55937-255-9).
Bill Rosenblatt, Learning the Korn Shell, O'Reilly, 360 pages, 1993, ISBN 978-1-56592-054-5
(1-56592-054-6).
Bill Rosenblatt and Arnold Robbins, Learning the Korn Shell, Second Edition, O'Reilly, 432 pages, 2002,
ISBN 978-0-596-00195-7 (0-596-00195-9).
Barry Rosenberg, KornShell Programming Tutorial, Addison-Wesley Professional, xxi + 324 pages, 1991, ISBN
978-0-201-56324-5 (0-201-56324-X).
AUTHORS
The MirBSD Korn Shell is developed by Thorsten Glaser <tg@mirbsd.org> and currently maintained as part of
The MirOS Project. This shell is based upon the Public Domain Korn SHell. The developer of mksh
recognises the efforts of the pdksh authors, who had dedicated their work into Public Domain, our users,
and all contributors, such as the Debian and OpenBSD projects. See the documentation, CVS, and web site
for details.
CAVEATS
mksh only supports the Unicode BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane).
mksh has a different scope model from AT&T UNIX ksh, which leads to subtile differences in semantics for
identical builtins. This can cause issues with a nameref to suddenly point to a local variable by
accident; fixing this is hard.
The parts of a pipeline, like below, are executed in subshells. Thus, variable assignments inside them
fail. Use co-processes instead.
foo | bar | read baz # will not change $baz
foo | bar |& read -p baz # will, however, do so
mksh provides a consistent set of 32-bit integer arithmetics, both signed and unsigned, with defined
wraparound and sign of the result of a modulo operation, even (defying POSIX) on 64-bit systems. If you
require 64-bit integer arithmetics, use lksh (legacy mksh) instead, but be aware that, in POSIX, it's
legal for the OS to make print $((2147483647 + 1)) delete all files on your system, as it's Undefined
Behaviour.
BUGS
Suspending (using ^Z) pipelines like the one below will only suspend the currently running part of the
pipeline; in this example, “fubar” is immediately printed on suspension (but not later after an fg).
$ /bin/sleep 666 && echo fubar
This document attempts to describe mksh R46 and up, compiled without any options impacting functionality,
such as MKSH_SMALL, when not called as /bin/sh which, on some systems only, enables set -o sh
automatically (whose behaviour differs across targets), for an operating environment supporting all of
its advanced needs. Please report bugs in mksh to the MirOS0 mailing list at <miros-mksh@mirbsd.org> or
in the #!/bin/mksh (or #ksh) IRC channel at irc.freenode.net (Port 6697 SSL, 6667 unencrypted), or at:
https://launchpad.net/mksh
MirBSD May 2, 2013 MKSH(1)