I am learning Linux and as a programmer myself, I find it easier to look at code in many cases rather than read and article on how something works. Today I was trying to find the source code for the 'clear' bash command. I found the compiled ELF file in /usr/bin but I could not find the corresponding clear.c or whatever the file would be called.

Could someone explain where source code is general kept? Thanks for a complete answer.

I'm not sure...but if it comes as part of bash perhaps you could download the source code for bash from the gnu website and inspect that?

Bash just runs the command by calling the binary in /usr/bin. I need the uncompiled source code.

It's the distributions to responsibility to provide source code for programs licensed under the GPL. Often, source code is not included on the CDs themselves, but there should be some sort of clue as to where you can get it. Try the Xandros web page. Or, as has already been suggested, the Gnu site.

I do not know if there is one consistent place to find all source code. If you get the full set of discs for most distro's it includes all the source code. If you go to the slackware site you can get all its source there too if you search the mirrors.eg at:

ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ft...e-10.0/source/

and the code for bash at

ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ft...source/a/bash/

You will need to download & extract the archive.

*everything* you want should be there. I am sorry I am not enough of a programmer to tell you where to find the bit you want is in all that, but I hope this helps. Perhaps search the extracted folder for a keyword?

I wish you success - what you are trying to do is the whole point of open source.

I found it on the Xandros ftp server site at ftp://ftp2.xandros.com/src/pool/xandros2.5-src/main/

This appears to be a Xandros specific source but just looking at it I cannot see any topical differences from Debian source.

Thanks all for the pointers.

I wasnt 100% confortable with the answers on what the numbers mean in man page names. I found the answer on the linux doc project website. www.tldp.org

Also, I found where the source code is generally kept.

Man page numbers are descripitons of there content according to the follow heirarchy

man1: User programs
Manual pages that describe publicly accessible commands are contained
in this chapter. Most program documentation that a user will need to
use is located here.

man2: System calls
This section describes all of the system calls (requests for the kernel
to perform operations).

man3: Library functions and subroutines
Section 3 describes program library routines that are not direct calls
to kernel services. This and chapter 2 are only really of interest to
programmers.

man4: Special files
Section 4 describes the special files, related driver functions, and
networking support available in the system. Typically, this includes
the device files found in /dev and the kernel interface to networking
protocol support.

man5: File formats
The formats for many data files are documented in the section 5. This
includes various include files, program output files, and system files.

man6: Games
This chapter documents games, demos, and generally trivial programs.
Different people have various notions about how essential this is.

man7: Miscellaneous Manual pages that are difficult to classify are
designated as being section 7. The troff and other text processing
macro packages are found here.

man8: System administration Programs used by system administrators
for system operation and maintenance are documented here. Some of
these programs are also occasionally useful for normal users.

The source doe is generally kept in

/usr/src
The 'linux' sub-directory holds the Linux kernel sources, header-files and documentation.

Clear could be part of the termutils programs which are available on the gnu.org website. Try there.

you could try to download from the slackware distribution servers, even if you dont use slackware itself,
under the source directory, youll find it uses only source code that is unmodified, so its identical to the original

clear is actually part of Ncurses. Check out http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/news.html you can find where to get the source code for all those programs.