Internal and External Linux Commands

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There are 2 types of Linux Commands.

  1. Internal (Shell Built ins)
  2. External

Internal commands are better than external commands from performance point of view
as shell does not have to fork new process to run internal commands (also called as built-ins).

You can find out if specific command is internal or external by executing below command.

$type <command-name>

If you get the output as command is “shell built-in”, that means the command is internal otherwise it is external.

Here are the examples of Internal Commands

  1. cd
  2. echo
  3. pwd

Here are the examples of External Commands

  1. ls
  2. dir

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