Terminal commands

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:

CommandDescription
dirLists the current directory contents (only available in Windows)
lsLists the current directory contents (not available in Windows command prompt)
cd dirNameChanges the current directory in the terminal to be dirName. (Note: dirName must be a subfolder of the current directory.)
mkdir dirNameMakes a new, empty directory called dirName
ni fileNameCreates 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 fileNameCreates 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 fileNameDeletes the file called fileName, which must be in the current directory (only available in Windows)
rm fileNameDeletes 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.