Important Unix Shell Questions

Last Updated on Tuesday, 3 May 2011 04:08 Written by EditorSunday, 16 March 2008 12:42

Some Important Unix Shell Questions for Recent Graduates to help them in their Interview Preparations.

1. There can be multiple Kernels and shells running on your system. True or False?
2. Why shell is called Command Interpreter?
3. Two UNIX systems may or may not use the same system calls. True or False?
4. To obtain help on any feature of the system, what are the possible help sources available?
5. Why are the directories /bin and /usr/bin usually found first in the output of echo $PATH?
6. If two commands with the same filename exist in two directories in PATH, how can they be executed.
7. How is the Current directory is indicated in the value of the PATH?
8. Use the type command with the following arguments—cd, date, pwd and ls. Which are the internal commands in the list?
9. What is the difference between an argument and an option?
10. if the command ls –all works on your system, which flavor of UNIX could you be using?
11. What does the secondary prompt look like and when does it appear?
12. You located the string crontab in a man page by searching with /crontab [Enter]. How do you find out the other occurrences of this string in the page?
13. What is a pager? Name the two standard pagers used by man.
14. If a command doesn’t seem to complete, which key will you press to interrupt it?
15. Do you need to wait for a command to finish before entering the next one?
16. What do the | and the three dots in the SYNOPSIS section of these man pages indicate as shown below?
    

    /usr/xpg4/bin/tail [ -f | -r ]
    

    /usr/bin/ls [ -aAbcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1 ] [file .. ]
17. How do you direct man to use a specific pager, say less?
18. What is a whitespace? Explain the treatment the shell metes out to a command that contains a lot of whitespace.
19. A Program file named foo exists in the current directory, but when we try to execute it by entering foo, we see the message foo: command not found. Explain how that can happen?
20. What do multiprogramming, multiuser and multitasking mean?
21. Why are many UNIX commands designed to perform simple rather than complex tasks?

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1. venky September 8, 2010 at 12:44 pm

   sir those Q are helpful but if answers are also given then more helpful
2. Narendra M April 22, 2010 at 11:52 am

   Plz send me the answers for the above questions.
3. nagesh singh March 27, 2010 at 12:06 pm

   sir the questions r informative, i am a pre- final year student, pls can u send me previous tcs and wipro question and answers in c, c++,c#,java, SQL,ds,os,cn. pls sir ………thank
4. nagesh singh March 27, 2010 at 12:05 pm

   sir the questions r informative, i am a pre- final year student, pls can u send me previous tcs and wipro question and answers in c, c++,c#,java, sql,ds,os,cn. pls sir ………thank u
5. sridhar March 4, 2010 at 9:25 am

   THEN WHAT ABOUT ANSWERS SIR