I wanted to do several commands on the same line I accidenta

I wanted to do several commands on the same line. I accidentally type “ls \\; cat data” and it does something strange. What, and why?

Answer:

Solution

If you have to run multiple commands in linux shell then you have use && symbol in order to execute them.

Suppose you have to list root and open data file the do as:

ls \\ &&cat data

But wnen you run ls \\; cat data”,it will give output as

ls: cannot access ;: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access cat: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access data: No such file or directory

because it will assume that  \\; cat data are these are files or directories.