How do I read the source code of shell commands?

user_1012909 0
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I would like to read the actual source code which the linux commands are written with. I've gained some experience using them and now I think it's time to interact with my machine at a deeper level.

I've found some commands here http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/GNU. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find basic commands such as 'ls' which seems to me easy enough to begin.

How exactly do I read the source code of the simple shell commands like 'ls'? I'm running on Ubuntu 12.04

command gnu-coreutils linux
8 Answers

You can have it on github using the command

git clone https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils.git

You can find all the source codes in the src folder.

You need to have git installed.

Things have changed since 2012, ls source code has now 5309 lines

user_88731200

BSD distributions are actually a nice way of reading the source code, by using their repositories, since it is all packed into one place, and you can view how historically the source code has evolved, or changed. So why not use BSD repos , such as NetBSD or OpenBSD for this task.

user_154084210
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