Internal and External Commands in Linux UNIX

Internal Command


Internal commands are the commands that are executed directly by the shell. These commands will not have a separate process. You can’t find these commands in PATH directories in system because these are built in shell command. echo is an external command and if you try to find its path it will show shell built in.

$ type echo
echo is a shell builtin

when you run echo the system will not search in PATH location, it will execute it from shell builtin commands that are stored in some separate file.



External Command


External commands are the commands that are executed by the kernel. These commands will have a process id running for it. External Command existed in any PATH directory like /bin, /usr/bin etc. like ls, sed, mv. These commands having independent existence in /bin,  /usr/bin, or any other directory. External commands paths can be found using type command

$ type ls

ls is /bin/ls

internal and external commands




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