Some Basic Unix Commands

1. Getting Started: Navigating Your Directories

If you have not yet done so, log in now so that you can work though the following commands.

Try This:

Upon logging in, your working directory should be your home directory. The command pwd will print the working directory. Give the command

pwd

You should see something like

/home/yourname

Now, let's make a place to play in. mkdir will make a new directory. Enter the command

mkdir playing

to create a directory named “playing” .

The command ls lists the contents of the working directory. More generally, ls directoryname will list the contents of any directory.1

Well, not really any directory. People can protect their own directories from the prying eyes of others, in which case ls will fail.

Give the command

and you should see playing listed. In fact, it may be the only thing listed.

The command cd is used to change the working directory. Give the command sequence

pwd cd playing pwd cd .. pwd cd ./playing pwd

to see this in action.

The cp command copies one or more files. You can give this command as cp file1 file2 to make a copy of file file1, the copy being named file2. Alternatively, you can copy one or more files into a directory by giving the command as

cp file₁ file₂…file_n directory

Try This:

Now try the following:

ls /usr/include

You should see a large number of files, including many ending in “.h” . Copy two of these files and check to see that the copy was successful, as follows:

cp /usr/include/math.h /usr/include/stdio.h ~/playing ls ~/playing

1. Well, not really any directory. People can protect their own directories from the prying eyes of others, in which case ls will fail. (back)