Introduction
The Unix Shell has several built-in text commands, which once executed force the computing machine to perform speific task.
In this tutorial you will learn how to use commands to:
- navigate in the file system using paths
- create/copy/move/remove folders and files
- list contents of the folder
- preview file contents
- modify text files manually in the terminal editors
First, open Terminal window and download the working directory of this tutorial by copying and pasting the following commnands to your terminal:
wget XXX
1. The Unix manual pages and history of used commands
man – manual, gives a guide of asked command
The man command will provide a description of a unix command and list the parameters that can be used to modify its behavior. To exit the manual for a command you press q on your keyboard.
man ls
man less
history – gives a history of recently used Unix commands
Browse all your previously used commands by typing history on your terminal (typically, last 500 commands will be saved in this file).
It is often convenient to find a command or oneliner by searching your history. Try these oneliners.
history | grep man | tail -n 5
NOTE: You can also recall your previous commands by pressing or arrow keys.
2. The Unix special characters
| character | function | syntax | example usage |
|---|---|---|---|
? |
replaces single character | m?_file.txt to replace ‘y’ in the my_file.txt | |
* |
replaces multiple characters | *file.txt to replace ‘my_’ in the my_file.txt | |
\| |
executes commands in order | command_1 | command_2 | cat my_file.txt | tail -5 |
> |
save standard stream to the output file | command_1 > output_file | cat my_file.txt > output.txt |
>> |
append standard stream to the end of the output file | command_1 » output_file | cat my_file.txt » output.txt |
2> |
save error stream to the output file | command_1 > output_file | cat my_file.txt 2> output.txt |
2>> |
append error stream to the end of the output file | command_1 2» output_file | cat my_file.txt 2» output.txt |
2>&1 |
redirects standard error to standard output | command_1 2>&1 output_file | cat my_file.txt 2>&1 output.txt |
/dev/null |
discard output from saving | command_1 > /dev/null | cat my_file.txt > /dev/null |
\n |
breaks text into next line | echo “text \n text in the next line” | |
\t |
inserts tabulator space | echo “text \t text after tabulator space” |
? and * – variables to represent one or many chracters in filenames
First, let’s display all text files with the .txt extension located on current path.
ls ./*.txt
We can use the ? variable to represent any single character. Therefore, all the Number files will have this pattern: ?.txt and all the Letter text files will have this pattern: ??.txt
First, verify this with the ls command
ls ??.txt
ls ?.txt
| – pipe to execute commands in the ordered sequence
3. Command-line navigation in the file system
3.1 Paths
You can use absolute path or abbreviated path.
Checking current path
pwd – Path of Working Directory
At this point you might be feeling like you are completely blind because you can’t see the result of what you did. So let me teach you a few more commands and change that. This command will tell you where you are.
pwd
In my case this returns the following to standard out where severin is my username that I used to log in.
/home/severin
What this is telling me is that I am in a directory named severin which is in a directory named home.
Changing the path
cd – Change Directory
You will recall we made a directory called unixTutorial above. We can change to that directory using the cd command.
cd unixTutorial
Now if we type the path of working directory command pwd we get the following
pwd
/home/severin/unixTutorial
We are now in a directory called unixTutorial which is a subdirectory of severin which is a subdirectory of home.
To change back to the previous directory we can type in the full path like so.
cd /home/severin/
or we can use .. which refers to the directory above the one you are in and type this.
cd ..
NOTE: Present directory is represented as . (dot) and parent directory is represented as .. (dot dot).
Try this out with the following commands
cd
cd unixTutorial
pwd
cd ..
pwd
cd ..
pwd
cd ..
pwd
cd
cd unixTutorial
pwd
TIP: You can type in first few letters of the directory name and then press Tab to auto complete rest of the name (especially useful when the file/directory name is long). This only works when there are unique matches for the starting letters you have typed. If there is more than one matching files/directories, pressing Tab twice will list all the matching names.
4. Command-line directory operations
4.1 Folder creation
Creating an empty dir
This section will introduce you to some basic file/directory navigation
mkdir – Make Directory Command
Let’s make a new directory (folder) called unixTutorial. To create a directory, the mkdir (make directory) command can be used. Type in the next command and hit the ↵ (Enter) key. Notice there is a space between the mkdir command and the filename we supply to the mkdir command
mkdir unixTutorial
NOTE: Unlike PC/Mac folders, in Unix it is better to not include spaces in names for directories. (the underscore “_” can be used to replace any spaces you might want).
Once you hit return, you will not see anything it will just give you a new prompt and if you try to type it again you will get an error message. Go ahead and try this if you want.
mkdir unixTutorial
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘unixTutorial’: File exists
Copying a dir
cp – copy command
The cp command can be used to duplicate a folder. To copy a folder you have to add the -r parameter to copy recursively
cp -r Letters Letters_copy
(Re)Moving a dir
rmdir or rm -r – Remove Directory
This command can remove an empty directory
Let’s remove the extra Deleteme2 directory using this command
rmdir Deleteme3
WARNING: about deleting files and directories
In Unix there is no undo command. If you delete a file it is gone. There is no trash bin. The next two commands are very powerful commands and can lead to unfortunate losses if not used with care. With that said you can only delete files you have created. So it is impossible to delete someone else files without permission.
4.2 Folder Preview
ls (list) command
| command | function | syntax/example usage |
|---|---|---|
ls |
list contents | ls [OPTIONS] DIRECTORY |
Now that we know how to move between directories, The contents of a directory can be viewed using ls. If no directory name is provided then ls will list all the contents of the present directory.
ls
ls .
ls DIRECTORY
Everyone should currently be in their unixTutorial directory that they just created, which is empty so the ls command will return you to a new prompt without anything written to standard out. To exit nano you type this series of keys – hit ctr x press y for yes to save and hit enter. Nano tells you how to exit along with many of the following shortcuts at the bottom of your screen and will step you through how to exit and save.
There are useful parameters for ls command that include:
ls –l #Lists all the files in lengthy or detailed view
ls –t #Lists all the files, sorted based on creation time
ls –S #Lists all the files, sorted based on size
5. Command-line file operations
| command | function | syntax/example usage |
|---|---|---|
touch |
create file | touch FILE |
rm |
remove file(s) | rm FILE |
cp |
copy files/directories | cp SOURCE DESTINATION |
mv |
move files/directories | mv SOURCE DESTINATION |
5.1 File creation
Creating an empty file
touch command
This command is used to quickly create many empty files.
touch AA.txt
touch BB.txt
touch CC.txt
touch 1.txt
touch 2.txt
touch 3.txt
Now if you use the ls command the standard output will be
1.txt 2.txt 3.txt AA.txt BB.txt CC.txt
You can also create multiple files using this command.
touch DD.txt EE.txt GG.txt 4.txt 5.txt 6.txt
ls
The standard output now returns
1.txt 2.txt 3.txt 4.txt 5.txt 6.txt AA.txt BB.txt CC.txt DD.txt EE.txt GG.txt
Copying a file
cp – copy command
The cp command can be used to duplicate a file
ls
cp myFirstFile.txt mySecondfile.txt
ls
(Re)Moving a file
rm – Remove file
In this example, we will remove the file deleteme3.txt in the Deleteme2 directory.
rm Deleteme2/deleteme3.txt
The -r is a parameter that attempts to remove directories as well as other types of files
ls
rm -r Deleteme Deleteme2/deleteme3.txt
ls
mv – move command
Move is used to move files to a different location and to rename a file.
mv 1.txt Numbers
The second function for the mv command is to rename a file. If you look inside the Letters directory, you will see that one of the letter.txt files is not in sequence. If we wanted to rename GG.txt to FF.txt we would do the following.
mv GG.txt FF.txt
5.2 File Preview
Easy to remember these commands using this sentence.
A cat has a head and a tail, more or less
| command | function | syntax/example usage |
|---|---|---|
cat |
catalog file contents | cat FILE |
head |
show first few lines of a file | head FILE |
tail |
show last few lines of a file | tail FILE |
more |
view file (with less options) | more FILE |
less |
view file (with more options) | less FILE |
Viewing file without edition
more – command to step through a file one screen length at a time using the spacebar.
Hit q to quit the file before reaching the end.
more numSeq.txt
less – similar to the more command but lets you scroll backwards as well.
less numSeq.txt
| less navigation | |
|---|---|
q |
quit |
u |
up one screen |
d or space bar |
down one screen |
g NUM |
go to line NUM |
Streaming file content
cat – concatenate and print files
This command will print out the entire file. Try it out with the numSeq.txt file. You should see all 100 numbers print to the screen.
head – head of the file.
This command will give you the first 10 lines of a file. Try it out with the numSeq.txt file.
head numSeq.txt
head -n 5 numSeq.txt
The -n parameter tells the head function to printout in this case 5 lines instead of the default 10 lines.
tail – tail of the file
This command will give you the last 10 lines of a file. Try it out with the numSeq.txt file.
tail numSeq.txt
tail -n 5 numSeq.txt
Modifying file in the text editor
…about Terminal Text Editors by exploring another tutorial