This text is a brief description of the features that are present in the Bash shell (version 4.1, 23 December 2009).
This is Edition 4.1, last updated 23 December 2009,
of The GNU Bash Reference Manual,
for Bash, Version 4.1.
Bash contains features that appear in other popular shells, and some features that only appear in Bash. Some of the shells that Bash has borrowed concepts from are the Bourne Shell (sh), the Korn Shell (ksh), and the C-shell (csh and its successor, tcsh). The following menu breaks the features up into categories based upon which one of these other shells inspired the feature.
This manual is meant as a brief introduction to features found in Bash. The Bash manual page should be used as the definitive reference on shell behavior.