Display information about shell builtin commands.

Synopsis

help [-s] [PATTERN ...]

Description

Displays brief summaries of just-bash shell builtins. If PATTERN is given, shows detailed help for builtins matching PATTERN; otherwise prints the list of builtin help topics.

Options

-s Output only a short usage synopsis for each topic matching PATTERN.

Examples

$ help

List all shell builtin commands.

$ help read

Show detailed help for the 'read' builtin.

Notes

Only covers shell builtins (cd, export, read, trap, etc.), not external commands like ls or grep — use '<command> --help' or 'man <command>' for those.

See Also

man, commands