lfs-book/appendixa/fileutils-desc.sgml

<sect2>
<title>Contents</title>

<para>
The Fileutils package contains the chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, dd, df, dir,
dircolors, du, install, ln, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, mknod, mv, rm, rmdir,
sync, touch and vdir programs.
</para>

</sect2>

<sect2><title>Description</title>

<sect3><title>chgrp</title>

<para>
chgrp changes the group ownership of each given file to the named group, 
which can be either a group name or a numeric group ID.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>chmod</title>

<para>
chmod changes the permissions of each given file according to mode, which 
can be either a symbolic representation of changes to make, or an octal 
number representing the bit pattern for the new permissions.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>chown</title>

<para>
chown changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>cp</title>

<para>
cp copies files from one place to another.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>dd</title>

<para>
dd copies a file (from the standard input to the standard output, by default) 
with a user-selectable blocksize, while optionally performing conversions 
on it.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>df</title>

<para>
df displays the amount of disk space available on the filesystem
containing each file name argument. If no file name is given, the space 
available on all currently mounted filesystems is shown.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>ls, dir and vdir</title>

<para>
dir and vdir are versions of ls with different default output formats. 
These programs list each given file or directory name. Directory contents 
are sorted alphabetically.  For ls, files are by default listed in columns, 
sorted  vertically, if the standard output is a terminal; otherwise they 
are listed one per  line. For dir, files are by default listed in columns,
sorted vertically. For vdir, files are by default listed in long format.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>dircolors</title>

<para>
dircolors  outputs commands to set the LS_COLOR environment variable.
The LS_COLOR variable is use to change the default color scheme used by
ls and related utilities.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>du</title>

<para>
du displays the amount of disk space used by each argument and for each 
subdirectory of directory arguments.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>install</title>

<para>
install copies files and sets their permission modes and, if possible, 
their owner and group.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>ln</title>

<para>
ln makes hard or soft (symbolic) links between files.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>mkdir</title>

<para>
mkdir creates directories with a given name.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>mkfifo</title>

<para>
mkfifo creates a FIFO with each given name.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>mknod</title>

<para>
mknod creates a FIFO, character special file, or block special file with the 
given file name.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>mv</title>

<para>
mv moves files from one directory to another or renames files, depending
on the arguments given to mv.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>rm</title>

<para>
rm removes files or directories.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>rmdir</title>

<para>
rmdir removes directories, if they are empty.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>sync</title>

<para>
sync forces changed blocks to disk and updates the super block.
</para>

</sect3>

<sect3><title>touch</title>

<para>
touch changes the access and modification times of each given file to the 
current time. Files that do not exist are created empty.
</para>

</sect3>

</sect2>