Please follow and complete the free online Command Line Crash Course tutorial or Codecademy's Learn the Command Line. These are helpful tutorials. Each "chapter" focuses on a command. Type the commands you see in the Do This section, and read the You Learned This section. Move on to the next chapter. You should be able to go through these in a couple of hours.
Here's a list of items with which you should be familiar:
- show current working directory path
- creating a directory
- deleting a directory
- creating a file using
touchcommand - deleting a file
- renaming a file
- listing hidden files
- copying a file from one directory to another
Make a cheat sheet for yourself: a list of at least ten commands and what they do. (Use the 8 items above and add a couple of your own.)
| Result | Command Line |
|---|---|
| show current working directory path | pwd |
| creating a directory | mkdir directory_name |
| deleting a directory | rm -r dirctory_name |
creating a file using touch command |
touch filename |
| deleting a file | rm filename |
| renaming a file | mv filename_original filename_renamed |
| listing hidden files | ls -a |
| copying a file from one directory to another | cp directory1/filename directory2/ |
| list all files of current directory | ls |
| switch directory | cd |
| move a file to a directory | mv filename directory/ |
What do the following commands do:
ls
ls -a
ls -l
ls -lh
ls -lah
ls -t
ls -Glp
| Command Line | Result |
|---|---|
| ls | list all files of current directory |
| ls -a | list all contents, including hidden files and directories |
| ls -l | list all contents in long format |
| ls -lh | list long format with readable file size |
| ls -lah | list long format with readable file size including hidden files |
| ls -t | sort by time & date lastly modified |
| ls -Glp | list long format with no owner (only group ID) and puts \ after directory name |
Explore these other ls options and pick 5 of your favorites:
ls -d
ls -t
ls -a
ls -l
ls -r
ls -X
What does xargs do? Give an example of how to use it.
It executes argument. Specifically, it reads data from standard input (stdin) and executes the command (supplied to it as argument) one or more times based on the input read. Any blanks and spaces in input are treated as delimiters, while blank lines are ignored. And If no command is supplied as argument to xargs, the default command that the tool executes is echo.
Examples to use:
- xargs find -name ".txt"
pass the find command along with its option "-name" as argument to xargs, and provide ".txt" as input through stdin