Live briefing
Everything about Command substitution
Feature of Unix shells and some programming languages
In computing, command substitution is a facility that allows a command to be run and its output to be pasted back on the command line as arguments to another command. Command substitution first appeared in the Bourne shell, introduced with Version 7 Unix in 1979, and has remained a characteristic of all later Unix shells. The feature has since been adopted in other programming languages as well, including Perl, PHP, Ruby and Microsoft's Powershell under Windows. It also appears in Microsoft's CMD.EXE in the FOR command and the ( ) command. Wikipedia →
đź§ Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: Command substitutionA 5-minute orientation
- Pick up a classic book: Automate the Boring Stuff with PythonThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Zimbabwe’s Special Maize Programme for the Import Substitution (Command Agriculture) Scheme: A Hit-and-Miss AffairCited 10 times
- Go sideways: C shellA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Bourne shellA closely related topic
đź“– Definitions
No dictionary entry for this exact phrase.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
📚 Books worth reading
Automate the Boring Stuff with PythonAl Sweigart · 2015
Learning the bash ShellCameron Newham, Bill Rosenblatt · 1995
The prince of the marshesRory Stewart · 2006
The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of AssisiCandide Chalippe, Hilarion Duerk · 1918
MartyrsFrançois-René de Chateaubriand · 1812
The Conspirators HierarchyJohn Coleman · 1992
The UNIX operating systemChristian, Kaare, Kaare Christian · 1983
The life and letters of St. Francis XavierHenry James Coleridge · 1872
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
đź”— Related topics
- C shell The C shell (csh or the improved version, tcsh) is a Unix shell created by Bill Joy while he was a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley…
- Bourne shell The Bourne shell (sh) is a shell command-line interpreter for computer operating systems. It first appeared on Version 7 Unix, as its default shell. Unix-like…
- Batch file A batch file is a script file in DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It consists of a series of commands to be executed by the command-line interpreter, stored…
- Sed sed (short for "stream editor") is a utility that transforms text via a script written in a relatively simple and compact programming language. It was…
- Command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI), also known as a command-line shell, is a means of interacting with software via commands, each formatted as a line of text…
- Bash (Unix shell) Bash (short for "Bourne Again SHell") is an interactive command interpreter and command language developed for Unix-like operating systems. Supported by…
- Test (Unix) test is a command-line utility found in Unix, Plan 9, and Unix-like operating systems that evaluates conditional expressions. test was turned into a shell…
- Glob (programming) glob() (/ɡlɒb/) is a POSIX C function for globbing, which is the archetypal use of pattern matching against the names in a filesystem directory such that…