A side goal of this class is for students to become more comfortable with using the terminal. With practice, you will find that you are faster at navigating folders, creating files/folders, compiling/running programs, using tools stuch as git, etc. using the terminal than you are using a GUI. Familiarity with a terminal is especially useful in system administration and web development.
Summary of common terminal commands
Here is a summary table of the most common terminal commands for this course:
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
| dir | Lists the current directory contents (only available in Windows) |
| ls | Lists the current directory contents (not available in Windows command prompt) |
| cd dirName | Changes the current directory in the terminal to be dirName. (Note: dirName must be a subfolder of the current directory.) |
| mkdir dirName | Makes a new, empty directory called dirName |
| ni fileName | Creates a new, empty file called fileName. We can do ni prog.c to create a new C program called prog.c (only available in Windows) |
| touch fileName | Creates a new, empty file called fileName. We can do touch prog.c to create a new C program called prog.c (only available in Mac/Linux/Unix) |
| cd .. | Updates the current directory in the terminal to be its parent directory. For example, if the current directory is C:\Users\Julie, then cd .. makes the current directory be C:\Users |
| del fileName | Deletes the file called fileName, which must be in the current directory (only available in Windows) |
| rm fileName | Deletes the file called fileName, which must be in the current directory (only available in Mac/Linux/Unix) |
Other terminal tips
When you are typing a directory name or file name in the terminal, you can type a few letters and hit Tab – the terminal will attempt to autocomplete the rest of the name.
To recall a command you recently typed in the terminal, you can use the up or down arrows. This saves you from typing the same commands over and over.