UNIX Commands Cheat Sheet

The UNIX Commands Cheat Sheet: One Card for Every UNIX System

Whether you’re on a Mac, a FreeBSD server, or a Solaris or AIX machine at work, this card gives you the commands that work everywhere, plus the ones that don’t. This two-sided, letter-size quick reference packs more than 100 commands, shortcuts and keystrokes onto one card, each with a plain-English explanation. It’s designed to be laminated so it can sit next to your keyboard for years.

What’s included

• The UNIX family and shells: what counts as UNIX, and how sh, ksh, csh/tcsh, bash and zsh differ (including why macOS uses zsh).
• Getting help: using man, keyword searches, and a chart of what each manual section covers.
• Everyday commands:
  • Navigating folders
  • Copying, moving and deleting files
  • Viewing files
  • Finding files with find
• Permissions: chmod, chown, umask and sudo, plus the special setuid, setgid and sticky bits explained in plain English.
• Redirection: sh vs. csh: a side-by-side table of the syntax differences that trip people up, including saving errors, setting variables, creating aliases and startup files.
• Text tools: grep, sed, awk, sort, cut, tr, diff, tee and xargs.
• The vi editor: the essential keystrokes for inserting, saving, quitting, moving, copying, deleting, searching and replacing. vi is on every UNIX system, so it’s always there when nothing else is.
• Processes, jobs and scheduling: the System V and BSD versions of ps, signals, background jobs, nice, at and crontab.
• System, users, networking and archives: uname, df, vmstat, netstat, ssh, classic tar, compress and pax.
• POSIX shell scripting: the special variables ($1, $#, $?), the test operators you need for if statements, and a sample script.
• Differences tables: the commands that change between systems for checking the OS version, installing software, managing services, networking, disks, logs and users:
  • macOS
  • FreeBSD
  • Solaris 11
  • AIX

Who it’s for

• System administrators who work across mixed UNIX environments.
• Mac users who want to master the Terminal.
• IT and computer science students learning UNIX fundamentals or preparing for certifications.
• Developers writing shell scripts that must run on any system.

What makes it great

• Portable knowledge: focuses on standard POSIX commands, so what you learn works on any UNIX.
• Rare cross-platform tables: macOS, FreeBSD, Solaris and AIX equivalents on one card. That information is usually scattered across four sets of manuals.
• Includes vi and csh: two classic UNIX essentials that most modern Linux guides skip.
• Plain English: every command has a short, clear description of what it does.
• Easy to scan: commands appear in a clean typewriter-style font, so they’re easy to read and type exactly.
• Pairs perfectly: works alongside the Linux Commands Cheat Sheet without repeating it.