Basic UNIX commands

The list of commands, used in UNIX shell (sh, bash, etc).

Basic File Operations

cd

Change Directory Use is very simple, and just like use of `cd` in DOS

cd ~/l33t/h4x/

Note that ~ is your home directory, if you need to see where you are (if your prompt doesn't display it, use:

pwd

mv

MoVe or rename a file

mv oldname.dix newname.dix

mv ~/olddirectory/file ~/newdirectory/file

Note that on *nix, moving and renaming files is essentially the same thing, as the entire path is considered part of the file name

cp

Captian Planet. I mean... CoPy

cp ~/old ~/new

Options

cp -R

Copies everything in a directory and subdirectories

scp

SFTP CoPy Like cp, but allows copying from one machine to another.

scp user@remote.machine.com:~/list.txt ./

If you wanted to copy an entire directory:

scp -r user@remote.machine.com:~/cake ./cake

Note that ./ is the current directory.

ls

Just listing file in current dirrectory

   ~% ls                                                             
   Mail            codes           mail            mbox            vk
   centericq.core  dead.letter     mails           public_html     zed

Options

Note, that options can be combined.

ls <dir>

Listing files in <dir> directory.

   ~% ls vk         
   album.pl     graffiti.pl  img

ls -a

Listing ALL files (include hidden).

   ~% ls -a                                                                
   .               .emacs.d        .ssh            codes           vk
   ..              .irssi          .subversion     dead.letter     zed
   .bash_history   .libetpan       .vifm           mail
   .bash_profile   .links          .zshrc          mails
   .elinks         .mc             Mail            mbox
   .elm            .pinerc         centericq.core  public_html

ls -l

Showing items in nice list format.

   ~% ls -l                                                               
   total 4292
   drwx------  2 dany  users      512 Apr  3  2007 Mail
   -rw-------  1 dany  users  2138112 Oct 29  2007 centericq.core
   drwxr-xr-x  3 dany  users      512 Sep  1 17:54 codes
   -rw-------  1 dany  users        1 May  2  2007 dead.letter
   drwx------  2 dany  users      512 Apr  9  2007 mail
   drwxr-xr-x  2 dany  users      512 Apr  2  2007 mails
   -rw-------  1 dany  users    16926 Oct 29  2007 mbox
   drwxrwxrwx  5 dany  users      512 Sep 10 16:20 public_html
   drwxr-xr-x  3 dany  users      512 Jun 26 20:14 vk
   -rwxrwxrwx  1 dany  users     1408 Jan 26  1999 zed

See also

• Batch
• Unix_operands