In recent years, the UNIX operating system has seen a huge boost in its popularity, especially with the emergence of Linux. For programmers and users of UNIX, this comes as no surprise: UNIX was designed to provide an environment that s powerful yet easy to use. One of the main strengths of UNIX is that it comes with a large collection of standard programs. These programs perform a wide variety of tasks from listing your files to reading email. Unlike other operating systems, one of the key features of UNIX is that these programs can be combined to perform complicated tasks and solve your problems. One of the most powerful standard programs available in UNIX is the shell. The shell is a program that provides you with a consistent and easy-to-use environment for executing programs in UNIX. If you have ever used a UNIX system, you have interacted with the shell.
