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Accepted
Pandya
Asked: 2014-08-19 05:12:13 +0800 CST

How do I list all available shell builtin commands?

  • 772

We know bash supports number of buitin commands like:

$ type type cd help command
type is a shell builtin
cd is a shell builtin
help is a shell builtin
command is a shell builtin

I want to get list of all available shell builtin commands. How do I do that by command-line?

command-line

7 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use compgen -b from a bash shell to get a list of the shell's builtin commands.

    • 25

  2. From the terminal type:

    help

    From help help:

    Display information about builtin commands.
    • 21

  3. Alternatively you can display with enable command: (Both @karel's and @steeldriver's answer works fine.)

    enable -a | cut -d " " -f 2,3

    If any builtin is disabled then it is shown with -n in out put.

    Example output:

    $ enable -a | cut -d " " -f 2,3
.
:
[
alias
bg
bind
break
builtin
caller
cd
command
compgen
complete
compopt
continue
declare
dirs
disown
echo
enable
eval
exec
exit
export
false
fc
fg
getopts
hash
help
history
jobs
kill
let
local
logout
mapfile
popd
printf
pushd
pwd
read
readarray
readonly
return
set
shift
shopt
source
suspend
test
times
trap
true
type
typeset
ulimit
umask
unalias
unset
wait
    • 13

  4. Another way: man builtins

    It displays the list of builtins at the top, then has all the details for each command below.

    SYNOPSIS
       bash defines the following built-in commands: :, ., [, alias, bg, bind,
       break,  builtin,  case,  cd,  command,  compgen,  complete,   continue,
       declare,  dirs, disown, echo, enable, eval, exec, exit, export, fc, fg,
       getopts, hash, help, history, if, jobs, kill, let, local, logout, popd,
       printf,  pushd, pwd, read, readonly, return, set, shift, shopt, source,
       suspend, test, times, trap,  type,  typeset,  ulimit,  umask,  unalias,
       unset, until, wait, while.
    • 3

  5. For those who hate forking external binaries simply for data formatting / extraction:

    while read -r _ cmd ; do echo $cmd ; done < <(enable -a)
    • 2

  6. Just type in the Terminal:

    man bash

    This will open the manual of bash. Scroll down you will find SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS. Here you can know about all the builtin commands and what they do. If you want the manual in a txt format, use this command

    man bash > FILENAME.txt

    Now you have the text file of bash manual.

    • 1

  7. Well, bash is the default shell for ubuntu and the existing answers answered well.

    For zshell, we can use enable command to list all builtins:

    enable

    and I get 103 builtin commands for my zshell:

    enable | wc -l

    Of course, we can also use enable to query all bash builtins:

    enable | awk '{print $2}'
    • 0