How To Use Command Line

March 21st 2020

@iamismileIsmile Hossain

Self taught full stack javascript web developer with a great passion for building things with code.

💻 Command Line:

The command line is a tool or interface for interacting with a computer using only text rather than the mouse.

Command-Line is an essential tool for software development. We can execute a wide variety of programs on our computer through this. In this tutorial, we are going to learn the necessary UNIX commands for development.

UNIX command is a type of command that is used in LINUX and macOS.

To run some basic UNIX command in windows you can download Git Command Line Interface from Git SCM.

🔰 Getting Started:

✨ Let's start to learn (can use it as a reference guide) ...

✔ Check the Current Directory ➡

pwd

On the command line, it's important to know the directory we are currently working on. For that, we can use

pwd

command.

It shows that I'm working on my Desktop directory.

✔ Display List of Files ➡

ls

To see the list of files and directories in the current directory use

ls

command in your CLI.

Shows all of my files and directories of my Desktop directory.

• To show the contents of a directory pass the directory name to the

ls

command i.e.

ls directory_name

• Some useful

ls

command options:-

```
ls -a
```
: list all files including hidden file starting with '.'
```
ls -l
```
: list with the long format
```
ls -la
```
: list long format including hidden files

✔ Create a Directory ➡

mkdir

We can create a new folder using the

mkdir

command. To use it type

mkdir folder_name

Use

ls

command to see the directory is created or not.

I create a cli-practice directory in my working directory i.e. Desktop directory.

✔ Move Between Directories ➡

cd

It's used to change directory or to move other directories. To use it type

cd directory_name

Can use

pwd

command to confirm your directory name.

Change my directory to the cli-practice directory. And the rest of the tutorial I'm gonna work within this directory.

✔ Parent Directory ➡

..

We have seen

cd

command to change directory but if we want to move back or want to move to the parent directory we can use a special symbol

..

after

cd

command, like

cd ..

✔ Create Files ➡

touch

We can create an empty file by typing

touch file_name

. It's going to create a new file in the current directory (the directory you are currently in) with your provided name.

I create a hello.txt file in my current working directory. Again you can use

ls

command to see the file is created or not.

Now open your hello.txt file in your text editor and write Hello Everyone! into your hello.txt file and save it.

✔ Display the Content of a File ➡

cat

We can display the content of a file using the

cat

command. To use it type

cat file_name

Shows the content of my hello.txt file.

✔ Moving Files & Directories ➡

mv

To move a file and directory, we use

mv

command.

By typing

mv file_to_move destination_directory

, you can move a file to the specified directory.

By entering

mv directory_to_move destination_directory

, you can move all the files and directories under that directory.

Before using this command, we are going to create two more directories and another txt file in our cli-practice directory.

mkdir html css

touch bye.txt

Yes, we can use multiple directories & files names one after another to create multiple directories & files in one command.

Move my bye.txt file into my css directory and then move my css directory into my html directory.

✔ Renaming Files & Directories ➡

mv

mv

command can also be used to rename a file and a directory.

You can rename a file by typing

mv old_file_name new_file_name

& also rename a directory by typing

mv old_directory_name new_directory_name

Rename my hello.txt file to the hi.txt file and html directory to the folder directory.

✔ Copying Files & Directories ➡

cp

To do this, we use the

cp

command.

• You can copy a file by entering

cp file_to_copy new_file_name

Copy my hi.txt file content into hello.txt file. For confirmation open your hello.txt file in your text editor.

• You can also copy a directory by adding the

-r

option, like

cp -r directory_to_copy new_directory_name

The

-r

option for "recursive" means that it will copy all of the files including the files inside of subfolders.

Here I copy all of the files from the folder to folder-copy.

✔ Removing Files & Directories ➡

rm

To do this, we use the

rm

command.

• To remove a file, you can use the command like

rm file_to_remove

Here I remove my hi.txt file.

• To remove a directory, use the command like

rm -r directory_to_remove

I remove my folder-copy directory from my cli-practice directory i.e. current working directory.

✔ Clear Screen ➡

clear

Clear command is used to clear the terminal screen.

✔ Home Directory ➡

The Home directory is represented by

. The Home directory refers to the base directory for the user. If we want to move to the Home directory we can use

cd ~

command. Or we can only use

cd

command.

🛠 Tools I used for this tutorial:-

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.🙂👋

Previously published at https://dev.to/iamismile/command-line-tutorial-58km

Please Visit My Website

How To Use Command Line

@iamismileIsmile Hossain

💻 Command Line:

🔰 Getting Started:

🛠 Tools I used for this tutorial:-

Related

A Friendly Guide to Easily Master the World's Most Powerful Operating System

Effective Coding Workflow: My VS Code Setup

@iamismileIsmile Hossain

Creating Command-line Based Chat Room using Python

@yashhhhrajYashraj Singh Chouhan

Tags