Grouping commands
examples/intro/grouping_commands.txt
$ ls -1 build/; ls -1 examples/ | wc html linux linux_v1.00.tar.gz linux_v1.00_linux.zip linux_v1.00_windows.zip 1 1 6 $ (ls -1 build/; ls -1 examples/) | wc 6 6 82
Without the parantheses, the pipe is only applied to the output of the second command. With the paranetheses, the output of both ls commands are combined and the pipe is applied to that. A subshell is spawned to execute the commands.
examples/intro/grouping_commands_cd.txt
$ pwd /home/foobar/training/linux $ (cd ~; pwd) /home/foobar $ pwd /home/foobar/training/linux