Terminal: an interface where the user types and executes text based commands.
I’ll admit that when I first opened the terminal in 2014, I disliked it. At the time, I strongly believed that using a Graphical User Interface, such as Finder on Mac, was much faster for things like deleting, copying, and creating files and folders. The tutorials and articles I would read kept insisting that the terminal was 🔑, though, so I kept going.
I’m glad I pushed through and kept learning to use the terminal! Eventually, with practice and consistency, the understanding and speed came. Now I barely use the GUI for managing my file system.
That said, the road wasn’t all smooth. There were a lot of terminal commands thrown at me during my journey. How was I supposed to memorize all of them??!!? At once?!?!
To prevent you from going through the same anxieties. I compiled a list of my Top Fave â¤ï¸ Terminal shortcuts. ðŸ˜
ls List files and directories (Folders)
cd Change directory
pwd Print Working Directory (Shows the full pathname of the current working directory)
touch Create a new file
mkdir Create a new directory
cp Copy files or directories
mv Move (rename) files or directories
rm Remove files
rm -r Remove Directories & files in
Note: Therm command is really powerful. It deletes files/directories without recovery. (It doesn’t go to the trash bin)
Ctrl + A Gets the cursor at the beginning of the line
Ctrl + E Gets the cursor to the end.
Cmd + k (Mac) `Ctrl + L (Linux/Mac) Clears the Terminal Screen
And now for my absolute favorite â¤ï¸: Tab auto-completion!
If you’re trying to remember a command, type at least one letter and hit tab twice and it will show you all the commands available based on the typed characters. If you type enough characters and only one match is left then it’ll auto-complete it for you. This works with all UNIX commands and even your file system.
Now go on and jump into your terminal, start playing with it & work your way towards becoming the terminal-ator. 😎
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This article originally published on the Color Coded Medium publication
Oldest comments (54)
When my friend showed my tab auto-complete it changed my life lol
Word! Tab auto-complete, completes me 😂❤️
it is good to alias rm to trash command.. it will become a life saver decision 😊
Typically when I alias things I will alias them to something shorter. I see no reason to alias rm specifically.
when I use alias it be something like this
git checkout=gcIt's about reducing key strokes 😃
I meant
alias rm="trash"CTRL-r to search through your bash command history:
unix.stackexchange.com/questions/7...
This is easily my favorite as well.
Oh, this is really cool! I'm gonna keep this in mind next time I run into this!!!!
Tanks for the tip!!!
Sometimes even faster,
!lsrepeats the last command that started with ls (or any other sequence of characters).The z command is one of my favorites. You just type
z dirand it searches all directories you visited for a directory name containing dir and jumps to the best match.I kept the post tailored to beginners to make it easier to get familiar with the terminal.
The z command looks pretty cool but it doesn't have documentation on how to set it up, and this is one of the things I found hard for me in the beginning. I can figure out how to it up but not everyone can.
Maybe it would be cool for you to write a blog post on it ? Or maybe even submit a pull request on how to set it up.
Then add
To your .zshrc file.
That's it.
I used this blog post to turbocharge my terminal. (The post recommends iTerm over the classic Terminal but everything works as expected in Terminal)
Good intro!
A couple of things:
checkout iterm2.com/ when you have some spare time. I think it's better than the default OSX Terminal
if you work on computer you own you don't really need your name and computer's name in the prompt, this way you can save some room in the window
Thank you. Actually that terminal was iterm2! I'm a huge fan of it! :-)
Bullet point 2 is a really good tip. I think I'll do that now because you're right! Freeing up real estate on the terminal is a plus!!!
Took a UNIX class last December. I have to say, I wish I had kept more notes, but this was a lovely refresher to terminal! Thanks!
I'm glad it helped! 😁
Great article!
How did you make your terminal prompt look this way? It looks very familiar, but I can't remember where did I see this.
I'm using this.
github.com/banga/powerline-shell
Cool, thank you!
I use a lot
du -sh */ | sort -hTo order current folder files by size
The
-hflag comes invalid (I'm on a Mac). Thanks for that tip though! This is pretty cool!They might've been going for
sort -ninstead. It sorts numerically instead of alphabetically (the only reasonable sort forduoutput). :-)Another fast tip for
lscommandls -l --sort <time | size>ls -lrt sorts by time ascending so the file edited last is at the bottom.
Try
sudo !!when you forgot to put sudo in front of last command.True! This is a good & powerful command. I'd like to mention that always understand what it is you're trying to do when you're using
sudo. :-)Just a heads up,
touchisn't actually meant to create files (although it does it if the specified string doesn't exist), it is meant to update a file's timestamp (in case you point it to an already existing file).You could also add the
<operator - which does the same ascat, but is actually meant to redirect stuff into the stdout of your terminal.Oh wow, I didn't know that about
touch. Thank you for clarifying this here.I tried the
<& that didn't seem to work on mac or linux.Try this:
or this (which means basically "write data to the file until you meet EOF label"):
>will rewrite contents of the file>>will append to the end of the fileWeird, I've tried it in both systems and it works flawlessly.
Just to be sure, did you type in
< filetoread? A lack of example might've been the problem in my post."open ." to open your current directory path in a Finder window in Mac
drag drop a file or directory into terminal from any application to automatically copy the text into the terminal window (handy for changing into directories within terminal)
Thanks for sharing your tips! These are awesome!
I use the first one all the time! I forgot to mention that one! :-)
The second one I didn't know about! That could come in handy in the future!
I learned something new! :-) Thank you, Scott!
My pleasure! Enjoy!
Ctrl + uis the first nature ofCtrl + l:)I personally do both mechanically.
echo 'something' somewhereandecho 'something' >> somewhereis also a beginner one that helps quite often, say adding items in a.gitignorefile.Whoa! I love everyone who's been sharing their tips as well! I've always used
Ctrl + Cto jump to a fresh new line. Now I know that I can doCtrl + uto clear out my terminal! :-)The echo command is awesome as well! I forgot to mention a lot of good ones. 😅
==>(Cmd + k (Mac) `Ctrl + L (Linux/Mac) Clears the Terminal Screen)
In macOS Sierra, its Ctrl + L. Ctrl + k does not work.
That's because It's not
Ctrl + K, it'sCmd + K:-)Yup, works fine! Both are working
Cmd + KandCtrl + LI use zsh and ohmyz.sh on Linux Mint 17.3 psnc.github.io/linuxme/