reading-notes

Terminal Notes

What is it, how does it work and how do I get to one.

The terminal is the text-based interface to the system. It works by presenting the user with a prompt, and the results will be displayed after typing to the prompt.
In order to open a terminal, a Mac user can find it under Applications –> Utilities; a Linux user can find it in Applications –> System (or Utilities); a Windows user will need to log into another machine then an SSH client is needed (such as Putty)

Basic Navigation.

pwd - Print Working Directory, outputs where the user is current at
ls - outputs what’s in our current location;
A path can be specified by starting with /, that can be used to specify an absolute path; whereas a relative path specifies a location in relation to where we currently are in the system so / is not needed
~ - shortcut to home directory
. - reference to your current directory
.. reference to the parent directory, ancestories can be tracked using ../../etc.
cd - change directory

More about Files.

In the linux system, everything is a file, which includes a text file, a directory, the keyboard, etc.
Linux is also extensionless, which means the system does not use the extension to determine what’s inside the file, instead it determines the file type by looking inside the files
If there are spaces in names, the name needs to be encased in quotes, ' ', or escape characters xx\ xx

Manual Pages.

Manual pages are a set of pages that explain every command available on your system including what they do, how to run them, and what arguments they accept.
The command can be used to search for specific items on the manual pages: keyword search: man -k <search term>; look up a specific command man <command>, perform a serach for ‘term’ within the manual page /<term>, and after performing a search within a manual page, the select the next found item n

File Manipulation. How to make, remove, rename, copy and move files and directories

mkdir - to make a directory
mkdir -p - make parent directory as needed
mkdir -pv - make the directory and tell us what it’s doing
rmdir - remove a directory, which also supports -v and -p options similarly to mkdir. Also the directory must be empty before it can be removed
rm - remove a file
rm -r - remove a non-empty directory
touch - creating a blank file
cp [options] <source> <destination> - copying a file or directory
mv [options] <source> <destination> - moving a file or directory
mkdir --> mv - effectively rename a file or directory

Cheatsheet²