Command Line Essentials

Introduction Working on the command line Manuals Essential command line tools
Command line essentials

Bart Van Loon
1st February 2012
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1 Introduction 2 Working on the command line
bash bash prompt some bash features

3 Manuals 4 Essential command line tools
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Some ancient history

When computers were big, incomprehensible beasts, like
you could talk to it using punched cards, paper tape or a terminal.

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This is such a computer terminal:
The famous DEC VT100 (1978).


These terminals gave you an interface for text entry and display through various standard streams.
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A little less ancient now

Today, most UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD have virtual terminals to provide several text terminals on a single computer to let you interface with the computer itself.
If youre in X now, try to press ctrl-alt-F1, ctrl-alt-F2, . . .

Modern times
In todays graphical world, we have terminal emulators, like xterm gnome-terminal rxvt ...
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Modern times
These terminal emulators run text-based applications. The most fundamental types of such applications are shells, like bash tcsh zsh ...
A shell gives you a command line interface (CLI).

Working on the command line
Lets assume you are running bash. bash is program, namely a shell meant for interactive use bash is also a powerful scripting language
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bash in interactive mode
When it starts, it runs one or more scripts: When started as an interactive login shell:
/etc/profile ~/.bash profile, ~/.bash login, or ~/.profile
When exited as a login shell:

~/.bash logout
When started as an interactive shell (but not a login shell):

~/.bashrc
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Your bash prompt
Lets start with what you see: bbbart@tuxitree:~$ bbbart : my username tuxitree : computers hostname : present working directory ( is the home directory) $ : this means I am not root
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Your bash prompt
You can change the look of this prompt! Why would you do so? it looks cool; its useful to keep track of system information; dierent machines/users can get dierent colours; have information about work environment available at all time; to quickly spot the prompt when you use scrollback; ...
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Your bash prompt

Your prompt conguration is stored in the variable PS1. $ echo $PS1 \u@\h:\w\$
\u : users username \h : computers hostname \w : present working directory \$ : $ when user is not root, # when user is root
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Your bash prompt
Try the following command (put it on one line with spaces in between):
PS1=\[\e[1;32m\]\u@\H:\[\e[m\] \[\e[1;37m\]\w\[\e[m\]\n\[\e[1;33m\]hist:\! \[\e[0;33m\] \[\e[1;31m\]jobs:\j \$\[\e[m\]
Now go an nd the prompt that suits you best!
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Keyboard shortcuts
Some useful keyboard shortcuts: tab : autocomplete from the cursor position ctrl-a : move cursor to the line start ctrl-c : send the SIGINT signal to the current task ctrl-d : send an EOF marker (if the line is empty) ctrl-e : move cursor to the line end ctrl-k : clear the line after the cursor ctrl-l : clear the screen content ctrl-u : clear the line before the cursor ctrl-z : send the SIGTSTP signal to the current task
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Stream redirecting
Remember the streams to interact with a terminal (stdin, stdout, stderr). You can redirect them!
> : redirect stdout 2> : redirect stderr < : redirect stdin
Special one: >> : redirect stdout, but append to the output
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Piping
You can also pipe streams to link commands: $ program1 | program2 is the same as $ program1 > tempfile $ program2 < tempfile $ rm tempfile
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Piping
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Learn from history
DRY is also a principle on the shell: and : navigate through your history ctrl-r : search the command history history : print your recent history !<n> : repeat command number <n> !! : repeat the last command !$ : special variable that contains the last word of the previous command
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Before we begin. . .
The most important command youll ever learn, is man: man : format and display the manual pages Most manual pages contain a synopsis of the command in question: mysql [options] db name mysql can take some options but has to have a name of a database as argument xpdf [options] [PDF-file [page | +dest]] xpdf can take some options and a PDF-le as arguments. If you pass a PDF-le as argument you can also give it a page or a destination, preceded by a +-symbol. Now check the synopsis of the ssh command.
Essential command line tools

The right tool for the right job cut : remove sections from each line of les du : estimate le space usage grep : print lines matching a pattern head : output the rst part of les nice : run a program with modied scheduling priority sort : sort lines of text les tail : output the last part of les wc : print newline, word, and byte counts
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cut
Name : cut Description : remove sections from each line of les Synopsis : cut OPTION... Useful options: -d DELIM : use DELIM instead of TAB for eld delimiter -f LIST : select only these elds A LIST is made up or ranges separated by commas. A range is N, N-, N-M or -M. [FILE]...
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du
Name : du Description : estimate le space usage Synopsis : du [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Useful options: -c : produce a grand total -s : display only a total for each argument -h : print sizes in human readable format
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grep
Name : grep Description : print lines matching a pattern Synopsis : grep [OPTIONS] PATTERN [FILE...] Useful options: -i : ignore case distinctions in the PATTERN -v : invert the sense of matching, to select non-matching lines -n : prex each line of output with the 1-based line number within its input le
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head
Name : head Description : output the rst part of les Synopsis : head [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Useful options: -n K : print the rst K lines instead of the rst 10
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nice
Name : nice Description : run a program with modied scheduling priority Synopsis : nice [OPTION] [COMMAND [ARG]...]
Useful options: -n N : add integer N to the niceness (default 10)
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sort
Name : sort Description : sort lines of text les Synopsis : sort [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Useful options: -h : compare human readable numbers -n : compare according to string numerical value -r : reverse the result of comparisons -u : output only the rst of an equal run
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tail
Name : tail Description : output the last part of les Synopsis : tail [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Useful options: -f : output appended data as the le grows -n K : print the last K lines instead of the last 10
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wc
Name : wc Description : print newline, word, and byte counts for each le Synopsis : wc [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Useful options: -l : print the newline counts
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References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bash_%28Unix_shell%29 http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redirection_%28computing%29
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Introduction Working on the command line Manuals Essential command line tools

Command line essentials

1st February 2012

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

1 Introduction 2 Working on the command line

bash bash prompt some bash features

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

Some ancient history

you could talk to it using punched cards, paper tape or a terminal.

Some ancient history

The famous DEC VT100 (1978).

Some ancient history

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

A little less ancient now

If youre in X now, try to press ctrl-alt-F1, ctrl-alt-F2, . . .

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

A shell gives you a command line interface (CLI).

bash bash prompt some bash features

Working on the command line

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

bash in interactive mode

When exited as a login shell:

When started as an interactive shell (but not a login shell):

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

Your bash prompt

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

Your bash prompt

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

Your bash prompt

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

Your bash prompt

PS1=\[\e[1;32m\]\u@\H:\[\e[m\] \[\e[1;37m\]\w\[\e[m\]\n\[\e[1;33m\]hist:\! \[\e[0;33m\] \[\e[1;31m\]jobs:\j \$\[\e[m\]

Now go an nd the prompt that suits you best!

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

> : redirect stdout 2> : redirect stderr < : redirect stdin

Special one: >> : redirect stdout, but append to the output

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features

Bart Van Loon

Command line essentials

bash bash prompt some bash features