Differences Between VMS and Unix

Item by Item

File system structure

VMS file systems are separated into separate disk drives, as do MS Windows systems. Within each drive, there is a set of nested directories and files. On VMS and MS Windows systems, you need to know which drive another directory is on before you can get files from it, change into it, look into it, and so on.

Unix file systems appear to the user as a single tree-structured set of directories and files. On Unix, there is a single path from the root of the system to each file and directory, regardless of which physical disk drive it is on

Command Syntax

Commands on a VMS system are case-insensitive.

Commands on a VMS system  use the '/' character as an indicator of a parameter

Commands on a VMS system can be abbreviated by using the shortest unique prefix of the command name

Commands on a Unix system are case sensitive

Commands on a Unix system use the '-' character as an indicator of a parameter

Commands on a Unix system can be aliased to anything the user wants. This can be done by the system administrator on a system-wide basis, or by the individual user on a command-by-command basis, aliasing only those commands the user wants to.

The Unix manual can show you how to do aliases, but the alias command is found under the shell you are using (csh or ksh) and not as a separate command. As a result, the aliasing mechanism can be found using "man csh" or "man ksh" and searching through the listing until you find aliases.

Unix Commands one by one

 

man the help command
pwd Print working Directory
ls Directory listing 
mkdir Make a new directory
cd  Change your current directory context
rm Remove a file (delete)
cp Copy a file
cat/more/less View the contents of a file
lp/lpr Print a file (Line Printer)
pwd  This shows you your current directory context.
   
who This command shows you who else is logged into the system
quota -v This command shows you how much of your allowed disk space you have used.