🍎🐧 Mac and Linux

Getting Started

Mac → You can boot up a new command line by searching up 'Terminal' in Launchpad

Linux → You can press CTRL+ALT+T to open a new Terminal

Basic commands

• Navigating folders

  cd → is short for 'change directory'. If you were to compare it back to the graphical interface, its much like navigating and clicking through folders through your file explorer.

  When specifying a directory to change to, you can use either absolute or relative path names. The absolute or full path starts from the system root /, and relative path starts from your current directory.

  Usually when you start a new Terminal, you are in the home directory, commonly denoted as ~

  You can navigate into folders by doing cd name-of-folder, and even nested folders by doing cd name-of-folder/nested-folder

  You can go back one level of folders by doing cd .. and multiple levels by doing cd ../..

  Still confused? No worries! There are lots of resources that give you lots of information about cd. Here are a few:

  • https://linuxize.com/post/linux-cd-command/

  ls → is short for 'list'. This command tells you what files are in your current working directory. If you are in the home directory, the output will look something like this:

  → ls
  Applications
  Desktop
  Downloads
  Library
  Music
  Files
  Documents
  Movies
  Pictures
  

• Copying, moving, and deleting files and folders

  cp → is short for 'copy'. This command lets you copy files and folders from one location to another. You can copy single files from A to B by doing cp A B. For example, if you want to copy a file from your Downloads into your home folder, it would look something like

  # copy a file from Downloads into the Home directory
  cp ~/Downloads/example.txt ~
  

  If you need to copy an entire folder, you can add the -r flag.

  # copy a folder inside Downloads to the current folder
  # you can reference current location using `.`
  cp -r ~/Downloads/example_folder .
  

  mv → is short for 'move'. The commands follow the same format as cp

  rm → is short for 'remove'. The commands follow the same format as mv and cp

• Creating files and folders touch → creates new, empty files. For example, touch example.txt will create a new empty file with the name example.txt in the current directory. mkdir → is short for 'make directory' and makes a new folder. For example, mkdir folder-name will create an empty folder with the name folder-name in the current directory.

• Viewing file contents cat → is short for 'concatenate' but really we just use it to print out file contents. Say you had a file called README.md and you wanted to quickly view what the contents of it were, you could do cat README.md and it would print out its contents into the terminal. If it's too long, you can do cat README.md | less so that it scrolls.

• Editing file contents nano → a simple text editor in the terminal. If you want to quickly edit the contents of a README, a Python script, or anything really, you can do nano file-name to edit it. When you're finished, press CTRL+X and save if you'd like.

Package Managers

Hate downloading installers? Wish you could just download and install stuff just from your command line? Package managers may be for you!

• apt (Linux) apt is a package manager that comes pre-installed with Linux. It makes it super easy to install packages and other stuff. You can install a new package by doing sudo apt install <package_name>. For example, if you wanted to install pip, a Python package manager for Python 3, you can just do sudo apt install python3-pip. To uninstall, you can just do sudo apt purge python3-pip.

  You can find more info here: https://itsfoss.com/apt-command-guide/

  • brew (Mac) Homebrew is the "missing package manager for macOS". Basically, it lets you manage, install, and remove software super easily through the command line. To install it, paste this into your terminal

    # install homebrew
    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
    

    Then, installing pa is as easy as brew install python. To uninstall, it's as easy as brew uninstall python.

  You can read more here: https://brew.sh/