What Does The Builtin Command In Bash Do

The builtin commands in Bash can be extremely useful, but what does “builtin” itself actually do? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

The Question

SuperUser reader lfalin wants to know what the builtin command in Bash does:

What does the builtin command in Bash do?

The Answer

SuperUser contributor Spiff has the answer for us:

Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

For example, imagine you defined a shell function named cd to print some extra status every time you change directories, but you messed it up and now you cannot change directories correctly. So now you can type builtin cd ~ to successfully cd back to your home directory without running your broken shell function.

By the way, my copy of the Bash man page has a section called “SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS”, and it defines the meaning of the builtin command in that section (transcribed below).