About commands

The basic form of any Unix command is:

   command_name options argument(s)

Most descriptions for commands such as those given in the On-line Manual use a much more precise syntax. For example:

   cp [-iprR] filename ... directory

This syntax has a few simple rules. Apply them to the command description and you can understand how the command is to be used.

• Command syntax rules
• Command options
• Command arguments

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