Request for a list of Terminal Commands in PDF format

Could someone please email me a pdf file that shows/lists all the Terminal commands.?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Terminal Commands

MacBook Pro 16″

Posted on Aug 29, 2025 6:03 AM

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Posted on Aug 29, 2025 8:42 AM

The number of built-in Bash 3.2.57 or Zsh 5.9 shell commands is preponderous and the list of non-built-in UNIX commands nears a couple of thousand. Some built-in shell commands have the same name as the non-builtin commands, no one must know the difference in their behavior.


No such PDF exists listing those ≈ 2000 non-builtin UNIX commands. You will never see the day you need to know most of them anyway.


Many, but not all of the non-builtin UNIX commands have man page documentation. You can generate a PDF for those that do, in the following example, for mandoc:

mandoc -Tpdf -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) | open -f -a Preview
mandoc -Tpdf -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) > ~/Desktop/mandoc.pdf
mandoc -Tutf8 -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) | more -R
mandoc -Tlocale -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) | more -R



For those that have no man page, you may invoke the command at the Terminal prompt with --help. And some commands have no man page nor respond to --help.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 29, 2025 8:42 AM in response to MatrixMerlin

The number of built-in Bash 3.2.57 or Zsh 5.9 shell commands is preponderous and the list of non-built-in UNIX commands nears a couple of thousand. Some built-in shell commands have the same name as the non-builtin commands, no one must know the difference in their behavior.


No such PDF exists listing those ≈ 2000 non-builtin UNIX commands. You will never see the day you need to know most of them anyway.


Many, but not all of the non-builtin UNIX commands have man page documentation. You can generate a PDF for those that do, in the following example, for mandoc:

mandoc -Tpdf -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) | open -f -a Preview
mandoc -Tpdf -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) > ~/Desktop/mandoc.pdf
mandoc -Tutf8 -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) | more -R
mandoc -Tlocale -mdoc $(man -w mandoc) | more -R



For those that have no man page, you may invoke the command at the Terminal prompt with --help. And some commands have no man page nor respond to --help.

Aug 29, 2025 8:09 AM in response to MatrixMerlin

Here is an introduction to the macOS command line....while it is referencing the Bash shell, many of the concepts also apply to Zsh which is the new default shell for new macOS installations (it is easy to switch between shells anyway):

https://scriptingosx.com/2017/07/first-steps-in-terminal/


Once you have the basics....it should be easy to expand beyond it when the need arises.

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Request for a list of Terminal Commands in PDF format

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