The Command Line
This topic matters as it relates to learning some of the more common terminal commands.
Summary
- The Command Line
The command line, also known as terminal, is a text based interface to our computer. We type commands and we get feedback in return as text.
- Basic Navigation
The command pwd stands for Print Working Directory. It tells us where our current working directory is. (e.g.)
pwd
/home/user
The command ls lists the contents of a directory. (e.g.)
ls
bin Documents public_html
The command cd changes directories.
- More About Files
Under Linux everything is a file, even directories. It is an extension-less system, it ignores the extension and looks inside the file to determine what type of file it is. It is also case sensitive.
The command file gets information about what type of file it is.
The command ls -a lists the contents of a directory, including hidden files.
- Manual Pages
Manual pages are a set of pages that explain every command available on our system including what they do, the specifics of how you run them and what command line arguments they accept.
The command man <command to look up> invokes the manual pages.(e.g.)
man ls
Name
ls - list directory contents
Synopsis
ls [option] ... [file] ...
Description
List information about the FILEs
(the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically
if none of -cftuvSUX
nor --sort is specified.
To do a keyword search for all manual pages containing the given search term we use the man -k <search term> command.
-
File Manipulation
- To make / create a directory we use
mkdir. - To remove a directory we use
rmdir. - To create a blank file we use
touch. - To copy a file or directory we use
cp. - To move a file or directory we use
mv. - To delete a file we use
rm.
- To make / create a directory we use
Things I want to know more about
- I would like to learn more about all of the other not so common terminal commands.