How to Read the Source Code of Shell Commands

How do I read the source code of shell commands?

All these basic commands are part of the coreutils package.

You can find all information you need here:

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/

If you want to download the latest source, you should use git:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/coreutils

To install git on your Ubuntu machine, you should use apt-get (git is not included in the standard Ubuntu installation):

sudo apt-get install git

Truth to be told, here you can find specific source for the ls command:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/ls.c

Only 4984 code lines for a command 'easy enough' as ls... are you still interested in reading it?? Good luck! :D

Where is the source code for understanding linux commands?

Download the source of coreutils from http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ and get started.
Get the source of bash http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/ (or other shell) and you can read the bash source.

You may want to read any Linux system programming book to read about the system calls API and know how to use them. Here is a link to unix.stackexchange:
What is the best book to learn Linux system programming?

The working of the Linux OS and working of the commands are different things. If you already know OS basics then you can try reading Understanding The Linux Kernels by Daniel Bovet. Else I think you might want to first read a standard OS book by Galvin, Tanenbaum or Deitel or any other book.

View source for standard Linux commands e.g. cat, ls, cd

Many of the core Linux commands are part of the GNU core utils. The source can be found online here

The file you are opening is the binary executables which are the stuff the kernel passes to the CPU. These files are made using a compiler that takes in the source code you and I understand and turns it via a number of stages into this CPU friendly format.

View source for standard Linux commands e.g. cat, ls, cd

Many of the core Linux commands are part of the GNU core utils. The source can be found online here

The file you are opening is the binary executables which are the stuff the kernel passes to the CPU. These files are made using a compiler that takes in the source code you and I understand and turns it via a number of stages into this CPU friendly format.

Where can I find the source code of Unix utilities?

On Debian and Ubuntu:

apt-get source coreutils

More generally: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/

Where is the command 'ls' kernel source code?

It's a duplicate of Where can I find source code for Linux core commands?

But you can find the source code of ls here:

http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/bin/ls/ls.c?rev=1.67&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

---

Related Topics