Linux

In my three months of being a software developer I have grown to love the Linux Bash CLI.

In this post, we will explore some simple Linux commands that will help you get more comfortable working with the command line.

• ls (lists all non-hidden files in current directory)
• ls -la (lists all files in current directory)
• cat filename.txt (prints the contents of the file to the screen)
• vim filename.txt (opens up file in vim text editor)
• [tab] (pressing tab autocompletes path or filename if it is in the directory)
• rm -rf images (removes file or folder recursively and forced, use with caution!)
• cp images/pic1.jpg . (copies the jpg to the current directory)
• mv images/pic1.jpg . (moves the jpg to the current directory)
• pwd (prints current path)
• mkdir temp (makes a new directory)
• touch file1.txt (creates a new file)
• cd folder1/folder2 (navigates to other directories)
• cd .. cd ../.. (go back a number of directories)
• cd - (go back to the last directory you were in)
• file filename.txt (lists what type of file)
• whatis vim (lists usages of command, i.e. vim)
• man (command) (looks up the manual for a specific command)

Piping

A very powerful feature of Linux is the function of piping. Most linux commands do one thing very well. If you would like to combine multiple function together you can use a pipe: |

If you would like to print a file, but only want the last 30 lines you would use:

cat file1.txt | tail -n 30

Now for some more advanced commands:

• h | grep {keyword} (lists history for all commands which use the keyword)
• grep in itself is a very useful command for filtering and searching for specific characters
• ctrl+R (reverse search, begin typing and this command will search in the history for something that fits this)
• ps -aux (lists all processes running on your machine)

More to come

• linux
• bash
• cli