Inside Solaris™ 9

Shell Built-Ins

Built-ins are used in shell programs to make decisions and to add intelligence to the task to be performed. Built-ins for the Bourne shell are listed in Tables 3.6 and 3.7. More information on the built-ins described in Table 3.6 is available in the Solaris online manual pages. The shell conditionals listed in Table 3.7 are described in this chapter. Each shell has its own set of built-ins, with the Bourne shell having the fewest. For this reason, it is the smallest and fastest of the three shells.

Table 3.6. Bourne Shell Built-Ins

Built-In	Description
break	Exits a for or while loop
continue	Continues the next iteration of a for or while loop
echo	Writes arguments on standard output
eval	Evaluates and executes arguments ...