Before this reading, follow this link and complete the experiential learning exercise “Terminus”.
In Terminus, you performed spells, interacted with items, and traveled to different locations. These are all translatable to Bash, with the spells as commands, items as files, and locations as directories.
cd [directory] - change directory into [directory].ls [directory] - list out the contents of the [directory]. If no argument is given (you just type out ls), it defaults to the current working directory.
. are hidden and ignored by ls.pwd - print working directory. Prints out the path of the current working directory.touch [file] - create a file named [file].mkdir [directory] - make a directory named [directory].cp [files] [destination] - copies the file to the destination.mv [files] [destination] - moves the file to the destination. Note that if the destination is the same as the source, then it renames the file.
mv john.jpg headland.jpg doesn’t move john.jpg anywhere, it renames it to headland.jpgrm [files] - permanently removes the files.rmdir [directory] - removes the directory, as long as it is empty.less [file] - read and display the contents of the file.cat [files] - concatenates and prints the files directly into the terminal. Useful for redirection.
cat file1 file2 file3 combines the contents of file1, file2, & file3 into a single output and prints it into the terminal.When a command takes in a file/directory name as an argument, you can write out a path instead of only file names in your current working directory. For example, if you are in ~, you can cd Desktop/JohnHeadland/Personal_Profile/ instead of doing cd Desktop, cd JohnHeadland, and then cd Personal_Profile.
Remember that case sensitivity matters! CD is not the same as cd. The same goes for file/directory names. “documents” is not the same as “Documents”.
Syntax is the structure any language must follow. Even Bash has a general syntax its commands follow (although some commands have their own):
command -option [argument]
The command is the command that Bash executes. For example, cd, touch, mkdir
The option is written after a dash -. It allows you to undergo different ways of executing the command. For example, ls -a (the a option lists all files, including hidden ones whose names begin with a dot, .). You can use multiple options at once by directly appending them, a la: pacman -Syu (this uses the -S, -y, and -u options all at once).
The argument is whatever you’re passing into the command. For example, cd Desktop passes in the Desktop argument to be cd’d into.
Use spaces to separate commands, options, and arguments. Do NOT use spaces otherwise, such as for file or directory names, as they will be read as separate arguments. For example, touch My file will not create a single file called “My file”, it will touch two separate files named “My” and “file”.
If you don’t know how to use a command, read the manual for that command by typing in man command, where command is the name of the command you would like to read about. It tells you the syntax for that command with its possible options (and what they do) and what to pass in for arguments. If you try using a command and something doesn’t work, or you have a question, read the manual.
When typing in arguments, you can use autocompletion with the Tab key. After typing in a unique amount of characters, if you press Tab, it automatically fills out the rest of the name for you! For example, if you’re in ~ and type in cd Doc and press Tab, the shell will automatically fill out the rest for you as cd Documents.
cd [directory] will bring you to a certain directoryls will list the contents of your present directory, so you can decide which folder to cd into next. If you don’t know where to go, use ls.pwd (or read the path next to your user@host in your terminal).. is the previous directory, and . is the current directory
cd .. will take you one directory up on the file system to go backwards.
~/Desktop/JDLAWebDev; cd .. will change directory to ~/Desktopcd past/back multiple folders at once if you know the path. Just use slashes to separate the directories.
~/Desktop/LinuxPython/JohnHeadland and you want to get to ~/Desktop/WebDev/IreneFang. You could type out the entire path, or just cd ../../WebDev/IreneFang.Click here for the experiential learning exercise that puts what you’ve just learned into practice.
Click here to do the final experiential learning exercise of the module, “Treasure Hunt”, before moving on to Module 3, “Basic HTML”.