Available Linux commands across Android versions

Question

I want to write some basic Linux commands in my Android app (namely ls, rm, cp, chmod with recursive -R option) but I am not sure whether they are available across different versions of the OS and whether they support "-R" or not. From my experience, cp seems to be added to Jelly Bean 4.2. The rest are all available in earlier versions.

May I ask if there is a source or reference for this? (Nothing seems to be available on the official Android site.)

Answer 1

You can always fire up a avd and in adb shell run ls /system/bin and ls /system/xbin, it will show all the commands present.