Take the 2-minute tour ×  This is for academic purpose. I want
to know which commands are executed when we do something in GUI,
for example creating a folder. I want to show that both the
mkdir shell command and create folder option from GUI does the
same thing.  share|improve this question Use strace to see what
system calls are being performed. –  Keith Dec 29 '12 at 7:43
and the thing is that the "create folder" option will probably
not call mkdir (the command) but the mkdir() system function.
This depends a lot on the GUI tool you use to do things, but I'd
expect many of those to use system calls instead. –  njsg Dec 29
'12 at 21:15 add comment  1 Answer  up vote 3 down vote accepted
You can observe what the process does with the strace command.
Strace shows the system calls performed by a process.
Everything¹ a process that affects its environment is done
through system calls. For example, creating a directory can only
be done by ultimately calling the mkdir system call. The mkdir
shell command is a thi