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Thursday, 19 April 2012

Internal and External Commands to the Unix Shell

Some commands that you type are internal , built into the shell. For example, the cd command is built-in. That is, the shell interprets that command and changes your current directory ( 1.21 ) for you. The ls command, on the other hand, is an external program stored in the file /bin/ls .

The shell doesn't start a separate process to run internal commands. External commands require the shell to fork and exec ( 1.11 ) a new subprocess ( 38.3 ) ; this takes some time, especially on a busy system. (Article 7.4 shows an example where extra speed can be important.)

Reference : http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/unix/upt/ch01_10.htm

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