Unix spoken here (1)

There are probably hundreds of pages on the web with good info about basic Unix commands (e.g. here, here). I thought I'd give some of the commands I think are most useful, but I have to start at the beginning. So, here goes with Unix in 5 minutes, Unleashed, For Dummies..

> cd > pwd /Users/telliott > cd Desktop > pwd /Users/telliott/Desktop > cd ~ > pwd /Users/telliott > cd Desktop > ls x.txt > cat x.txt some data

The first command, cd, says to change directory; with no other argument given, we go to our home directory. To see where we are in the file system we can do pwd: print working directory. Also, the ~ symbol is a shorthand for the user's home directory.

The "shell" is smart and has "command-completion." For example, from my home directory I enter cd De and then press tab. The shell fills out "Desktop."

Another very common command is ls: list the contents of the current directory (since there is no argument). And to see the contents of a file you might do cat with the results shown.

> ls -a . .DS_Store .temp .. .localized x.txt > ls /usr/bin/pyth* /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/python2.6-config /usr/bin/python-config /usr/bin/pythonw /usr/bin/python2.5 /usr/bin/pythonw2.5 /usr/bin/python2.5-config /usr/bin/pythonw2.6 /usr/bin/python2.6

Any directory may have "hidden" files whose names are prefaced by a dot `.`. These can be shown with ls -a. There are many (many) other options with results cataloged under man some_command.

The shell understands paths to files in both an absolute and relative sense. A path starting with / is absolute, otherwise it's relative. Hence /usr/bin is a directory starting from the root of the file system, while Desktop is only understood as a valid destination if I'm in my home directory (or some other directory with Desktop as a sub-directory).

The character * is a wild card and matches anything; ls /usr/bin/pyth* lists all the entries matching pyth- + something in the given directory.

> pushd /usr/bin /usr/bin ~/Desktop > pwd /usr/bin > popd ~/Desktop > pwd /Users/telliott/Desktop > cat -n ~/Desktop/x.txt 1 some data > cal January 2011 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 > cd .. > pwd /Users/telliott_admin

Sometimes we want to make a jump in the file system but intend to come right back. pushd and popd are useful here, with results as shown.

As one more example of using options or arguments to a command, cat takes the option -n, which numbers the output lines. cal is probably faster than finding the Calendar.app, since I don't usually have it in the Dock.

Finally, to move toward the tips of the file system tree, you specify the directory at the next level so it has to be explicit, but there is only one parent, which we can reach implicitly with cd .., meaning "go up."