All your data is contained within files: office documents, songs, movies, etc. We present some commands to organize and manage those files.
ls ( LiSt) is equivalent to the DOS command dir. Its syntax is as follows:
ls <directory>
-R
: recursively list the contents of the
directory and all its subdirectories. Please note that
before displaying a directory's contents the name of the
directory itself is shown.
-l
: use a long listing format. Details
about the file such as the file's type, permissions,
owner and size are displayed.
-a
: show also hidden files. In
UNIX
® systems,
all files whose names start with a period (
.
) are hidden. Use this option to show
such files when listing a directory. If you don't want
the current directory and its parent (namely,
.
and
..
) to be displayed use the
-A
option instead.
ls -lA /tmp/movies /tmp/images: list
the contents of both the
movies
and
images
directories inside the
/tmp
directory, displaying file
details and hidden files, but not displaying the
.
and
..
entries for each directory;
ls -R ~/: display, recursively, all the files and directories you have inside your personal directory.
cp ( CoPy) is equivalent to the DOS commands copy and xcopy but has more options. Its syntax is as follows:
cp <file|directory> [file|directory ...] <destination>
cp -f /tmp/images/* images/: copies
all files in the
/tmp/images
directory to the
images
directory located in the
current directory. It
doesn't request confirmation if a
file is going to be overwritten.
cp -vR docs/ /shared/mp3s/* mystuff/:
copies the whole
docs
directory, plus all files in the
/shared/mp3s
directory to the
mystuff
directory, displaying all
actions performed.
cp foo bar: makes a copy of the
foo
file with the name
bar
in the current directory.
mv ( MoVe) is equivalent to the DOS command move. Its syntax is as follows:
mv <file|directory> [file|directory ...] <destination>
Note that when you move multiple files the destination must be a directory. To rename a file you simply move it to the new name.
mv /tmp/pics/*.png .: move all files
in the
/tmp/pics
directory whose names end
with
.png
to the current directory.
mv foo bar: rename file
foo
to
bar
. If a
bar
directory already existed, the
effect of this command would be to move file
foo
or the whole directory (the
directory itself plus all files and directories in it,
recursively) into the
bar
directory.
mv -vf file* images/ trash/: move,
without requesting confirmation, all files in the current
directory whose names begin with
file
, together with the entire
images
directory to the
trash
directory, and show each
operation carried out.
The rm command ( ReMove) is equivalent to the DOS commands del and deltree, but has more options. Its syntax is as follows:
rm <file|directory>
rm images/*.jpg file1: deletes all
files with names ending in
.jpg
in the
images
directory and deletes
file1
in the current
directory.
rm -Rf images/misc/ file*: deletes,
without requesting confirmation, the whole directory
misc
in the
images
directory, together with all
files in the current directory whose names begin with
file
.
mkdir ( MaKe DIRectory) is equivalent to the DOS commands mkdir and md. Its syntax is as follows:
mkdir
Only the
-p
option is worth noting. It does two
things:
creates parent directories if they did not exist previously. Without this option, mkdir would just fail, complaining that these directories do not exist;
returns silently
if the directory you wanted to create already exists. If
the
-p
option is not specified,
mkdir sends back an error message,
complaining that the directory already exists.
The current
working directory, symbolized by a period (
.
), is the place on the file system you
are
“standing onto”.
The
double period (
..
) symbolizes the parent directory of the
current one which is
“one level up”(or back) on the file system
structure.
cd ( Change Directory) lets you navigate the file system structure. Its syntax is as follows:
cd <directory>