Hello! Can someone help me with an explanation of this command?

ls /etc | grep conf | grep -V "\." | sort > ~/conf

I hope you can explain each section and what it all means and what this is supposed to do... the only things i think i understand is that it is a pipe.. and its supposed to redirect to the conf file?

thank you so much for your help!

Well, you could just
for each cmd and read the manual and/or google would do as well.


Anyway... basically it lists the /etc dir, looks for the string 'conf' in the o/p, attempts to eliminate strings with literal '.'s in them (although that won't work; uppercase V is version, lowercase v is 'invert-match' ie don't match), then sort (sic) the results into a file (conf) in the user's home dir .

HTH

A much better option (which is doing the same thing)
"ls /etc" lists all files from the /etc directory, then it passes the results to the awk command which is using the Reqex to filter out all the files which do not end with ".conf", after that it writes the result to the "conf" file located inside the users home directory.

There is no need for the "sort" command because "ls" is already returning the sorted results (depends on the configuration through)

"|" (Pipe) means pass the result of the last command to the next command
">" (Redirection) means write the result to whatever is on the right side (file, device, socket)

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Hi and welcome to LQ,

Yes, the output of command1 is being used as input to command2, e.g.
is looking for the pattern "ls" in the output of the history command.

Yes, this is IO-redirection. The output of command is written to a file instead of being sent to stdout (basically your screen/terminal).

For the argument to grep and how it works, or for how the sort command works, check out the man pages:
Since your thread title says "learning ...", I think you should read a bit more. This type of command is quite straightforward.

Check out:
Introduction to Linux - A hands on guide (and some Bash scripting guides as well) at
http://www.tldp.org/guides.html
and other stuff at http://www.tldp.org/

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Learn the basics, you will be a master.

Check out this link: https://www.guru99.com/linux-pipe-grep.html

Keyword: grep and pipe tutorial

Good luck!

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Yes, it's broken and likely doesn't do what its author intended. If you're looking to learn from example, I'd look elsewhere.

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Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

If you really wish to learn UNIX and command line work then I suggest that you can read & learn from the following; Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

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Thank you so much everyone! I am literally just starting to learn but am in an advanced course and all of the tools and explanations given have really helped me. thanks again!

Kind of a complex command for a newbie.

You will have to learn your shell's rules to start. A command in one shell may change in a different. I assume you have some version of bash.

Off hand it looks like

list etc
pipe output to
the command grep conf
Pipe that output to.... You get the idea now hopefully.

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-...in-linux-unix/

learning the AWK and SED commands currently. Would anyone be able to have a IM chat going with me so i can ask questions in real time? any help is greatly appreciated.