Basic commands in terminal computing

In here, we want to demonstrate basic commands when doing work in the powershell/terminal as well as in the jupyter notebook.

NOTE, that when running terminal commands in the jupyter notebook, you need to add a ! in front of the command, so e.g. !ls.

File and Directory Management

  • ls - shows the content of your current directory.

ls
ls -l    # Detailed list (long format)
ls -a    # Show hidden files

  • cd - Change directory.

cd /path/to/directory
cd ~     # Go to home directory
cd ..    # Go up one directory level

  • pwd - Print working directory (shows your current directory).

pwd

  • mkdir - Create a new directory.

mkdir new_directory

  • rmdir - Remove an empty directory.

rmdir directory_name

  • cp - Copy files or directories.

cp source_file destination_file
cp -r source_directory destination_directory   # Recursive copy (for directories)

  • mv - Move or rename files or directories.

mv old_name new_name
mv file /new/location

  • rm - Remove files or directories.

rm file_name
rm -r directory_name    # Recursive remove (for directories)
rm -f file_name         # Force removal (use with caution)

File Viewing and Editing

  • cat - Display the contents of a file.

cat file_name

  • less - View file contents one page at a time.

less file_name

  • touch` - Create an empty file or update the timestamp of an existing file.

touch file_name

  • tail - Showes the last lines of a file

tail file_name
tail -n N file_name     #shows the last N lines of the file

Search and Find

  • grep - Search inside files.

grep "search_term" file_name
grep -r "search_term" directory   # Recursive search

  • find - Search for files and directories.

find /path -name "file_name"

Compression and Archiving

  • tar - Archive or extract files.

tar -cvf archive_name.tar directory_name   # Create a tar archive
tar -xvf archive_name.tar                  # Extract a tar archive
tar -czvf archive_name.tar.gz directory_name   # Create a gzip-compressed tar archive
tar -xzvf archive_name.tar.gz                  # Extract a gzip-compressed tar archive