Unix Command Summary:
Unix Command Summary
- cat — for creating and displaying short files
- chmod — change permissions
- cd — change directory
- cp — for copying files
- date — display date
- echo — echo argument
- ftp — connect to a remote machine to download or upload files
- grep — search file
- head — display first part of file
- ls — see what files you have
- lpr — standard print command (see also print )
- more — use to read files
- mkdir — create directory
- mv — for moving and renaming files
- ncftp — especially good for downloading files via anonymous ftp.
- print — custom print command (see also lpr )
- pwd — find out what directory you are in
- rm — remove a file
- rmdir — remove directory
- rsh — remote shell
- setenv — set an environment variable
- sort — sort file
- tail — display last part of file
- tar — create an archive, add or extract files
- telnet — log in to another machine
- wc — count characters, words, lines
cat
This is one of the most flexible Unix commands. We can use to create, view and concatenate files. For our first example we create a three-item English-Spanish dictionary in a file called “dict.”
% cat >dict red rojo green verde blue azul <control-D> %
<control-D> stands for “hold the control key down, then tap ‘d'”. The symbol > tells the computer that what is typed is to be put into the file dict. To view a file we use catin a different way:
% cat dict red rojo green verde blue azul %
If we wish to add text to an existing file we do this:
% cat >>dict white blanco black negro <control-D> %
Now suppose that we have another file tmpthat looks like this:
% cat tmp cat gato dog perro %
Then we can join dict and tmplike this:
% cat dict tmp >dict2
We could check the number of lines in the new file like this:
% wc -l dict2 8
The command wc counts things — the number of characters, words, and line in a file.
chmod
This command is used to change the permissions of a file or directory. For example to make a file essay.001readable by everyone, we do this:
% chmod a+r essay.001
To make a file, e.g., a shell script mycommandexecutable, we do this
% chmod +x mycommand
Now we can run mycommandas a command. To check the permissions of a file, use ls -l . For more information on chmod, use man chmod.
cd
Use cd to change directory. Use pwd to see what directory you are in.
% cd english % pwd % /u/ma/jeremy/english % ls novel poems % cd novel % pwd % /u/ma/jeremy/english/novel % ls ch1 ch2 ch3 journal scrapbook % cd .. % pwd % /u/ma/jeremy/english % cd poems % cd % /u/ma/jeremy
Jeremy began in his home directory, then went to his english subdirectory. He listed this directory using ls , found that it contained two entries, both of which happen to be diretories. He cd’d to the diretory novel, and found that he had gotten only as far as chapter 3 in his writing. Then he used cd .. to jump back one level. If had wanted to jump back one level, then go to poems he could have said cd ../poems. Finally he used cd with no argument to jump back to his home directory.
cp
Use cpto copy files or directories.
% cp foo foo.2
This makes a copy of the file foo.
% cp ~/poems/jabber .
This copies the file jabber in the directory poems to the current directory. The symbol “.” stands for the current directory. The symbol “~” stands for the home directory.
date
Use this command to check the date and time.
% date Fri Jan 6 08:52:42 MST 1995
echo
The echocommand echoes its arguments. Here are some examples:
% echo this this % echo $EDITOR /usr/local/bin/emacs % echo $PRINTER b129lab1
Things like PRINTER are so-called environment variables. This one stores the name of the default printer — the one that print jobs will go to unless you take some action to change things. The dollar sign before an environment variable is needed to get the value in the variable. Try the following to verify this:
% echo PRINTER PRINTER
ftp
Use ftp to connect to a remote machine, then upload or download files. See also: ncftp Example 1: We’ll connect to the machine fubar.net, then change director to mystuff, then download the file homework11:
% ftp solitude Connected to fubar.net. 220 fubar.net FTP server (Version wu-2.4(11) Mon Apr 18 17:26:33 MDT 1994) ready. Name (solitude:carlson): jeremy 331 Password required for jeremy. Password: 230 User jeremy logged in. ftp> cd mystuff 250 CWD command successful. ftp> get homework11 ftp> quit
Example 2: We’ll connect to the machine fubar.net, then change director to mystuff, then upload the file collected-letters:
% ftp solitude Connected to fubar.net. 220 fubar.net FTP server (Version wu-2.4(11) Mon Apr 18 17:26:33 MDT 1994) ready. Name (solitude:carlson): jeremy 331 Password required for jeremy. Password: 230 User jeremy logged in. ftp> cd mystuff 250 CWD command successful. ftp> put collected-letters ftp> quit
The ftp program sends files in ascii (text) format unless you specify binary mode:
ftp> binary ftp> put foo ftp> ascii ftp> get bar
The file foo was transferred in binary mode, the file bar was transferred in ascii mode.
grep
Use this command to search for information in a file or files. For example, suppose that we have a file dict whose contents are
red rojo green verde blue azul white blanco black negro
Then we can look up items in our file like this;
% grep red dict red rojo % grep blanco dict white blanco % grep brown dict %
Notice that no output was returned by grep brown. This is because “brown” is not in our dictionary file. Grep can also be combined with other commands. For example, if one had a file of phone numbers named “ph”, one entry per line, then the following command would give an alphabetical list of all persons whose name contains the string “Fred”.
% grep Fred ph | sort Alpha, Fred: 333-6565 Beta, Freddie: 656-0099 Frederickson, Molly: 444-0981 Gamma, Fred-George: 111-7676 Zeta, Frederick: 431-0987
The symbol “|” is called “pipe.” It pipes the output of the grep command into the input of the sort command. For more information on grep, consult
% man grep
head
Use this command to look at the head of a file. For example,
% head essay.001
displays the first 10 lines of the file essay.001To see a specific number of lines, do this:
% head -n 20 essay.001
This displays the first 20 lines of the file.
ls
Use lsto see what files you have. Your files are kept in something called a directory.
% ls foo letter2 foobar letter3 letter1 maple-assignment1 %
Note that you have six files. There are some useful variants of the lscommand:
% ls l* letter1 letter2 letter3 %
Note what happened: all the files whose name begins with “l” are listed. The asterisk (*) is the ” wildcard” character. It matches any string.
lpr
This is the standard Unix command for printing a file. It stands for the ancient “line printer.” See
% man lpr
for information on how it works. See print for information on our local intelligent print command.
mkdir
Use this command to create a directory.
% mkdir essays
To get “into” this directory, do
% cd essays
To see what files are in essays, do this:
% ls
There shouldn’t be any files there yet, since you just made it. To create files, see cat or emacs.
more
More is a command used to read text files. For example, we could do this:
% more poems
The effect of this to let you read the file “poems “. It probably will not fit in one screen, so you need to know how to “turn pages”. Here are the basic commands:
- q — quit more
- spacebar — read next page
- return key — read next line
- b — go back one page
For still more information, use the command man more.
mv
Use this command to change the name of file and directories.
% mv foo foobar
The file that was named foo is now named foobar
ncftp
Use ncftpfor anonymous ftp — that means you don’t have to have a password.
% ncftp ftp.fubar.net Connected to ftp.fubar.net > get jokes.txt
The file jokes.txt is downloaded from the machine ftp.fubar.net.
This is a moderately intelligent print command.
% print foo % print notes.ps % print manuscript.dvi
In each case print does the right thing, regardless of whether the file is a text file (like foo ), a postcript file (like notes.ps, or a dvi file (like manuscript.dvi. In these examples the file is printed on the default printer. To see what this is, do
and read the message displayed. To print on a specific printer, do this:
% print foo jwb321 % print notes.ps jwb321 % print manuscript.dvi jwb321
To change the default printer, do this:
% setenv PRINTER jwb321
pwd
Use this command to find out what directory you are working in.
% pwd /u/ma/jeremy % cd homework % pwd /u/ma/jeremy/homework % ls assign-1 assign-2 assign-3 % cd % pwd /u/ma/jeremy %
Jeremy began by working in his “home” directory. Then he cd ‘d into his homework subdirectory. Cd means ” change directory”. He used pwd to check to make sure he was in the right place, then used ls to see if all his homework files were there. (They were). Then he cd’d back to his home directory.
rm
Use rmto remove files from your directory.
% rm foo remove foo? y % rm letter* remove letter1? y remove letter2? y remove letter3? n %
The first command removed a single file. The second command was intended to remove all files beginning with the string “letter.” However, our user (Jeremy?) decided not to remove letter3.
rmdir
Use this command to remove a directory. For example, to remove a directory called “essays”, do this:
% rmdir essays
A directory must be empty before it can be removed. To empty a directory, use rm.
rsh
Use this command if you want to work on a computer different from the one you are currently working on. One reason to do this is that the remote machine might be faster. For example, the command
% rsh solitude
connects you to the machine solitude. This is one of our public workstations and is fairly fast. See also: telnet
setenv
% echo $PRINTER labprinter % setenv PRINTER myprinter % echo $PRINTER myprinter
sort
Use this commmand to sort a file. For example, suppose we have a file dictwith contents
red rojo green verde blue azul white blanco black negro
Then we can do this:
% sort dict black negro blue azul green verde red rojo white blanco
Here the output of sortwent to the screen. To store the output in file we do this:
% sort dict >dict.sorted
You can check the contents of the file dict.sorted using cat , more , or emacs .
tail
Use this command to look at the tail of a file. For example,
% tail essay.001
displays the last 10 lines of the file essay.001To see a specific number of lines, do this:
% tail -n 20 essay.001
This displays the last 20 lines of the file.
tar
Use create compressed archives of directories and files, and also to extract directories and files from an archive. Example:
% tar -tvzf foo.tar.gz
displays the file names in the compressed archive foo.tar.gzwhile
% tar -xvzf foo.tar.gz
extracts the files.
telnet
Use this command to log in to another machine from the machine you are currently working on. For example, to log in to the machine “solitude”, do this:
% telnet solitude
See also: rsh.
wc
Use this command to count the number of characters, words, and lines in a file. Suppose, for example, that we have a file dictwith contents
red rojo green verde blue azul white blanco black negro
Then we can do this
% wc dict 5 10 56 tmp
This shows that dicthas 5 lines, 10 words, and 56 characters. The word count command has several options, as illustrated below:
% wc -l dict 5 tmp % wc -w dict 10 tmp % wc -c dict 56 tmp
dummy
Under construction