Make sure to run all of the copy commands below, as we'll be using files from the Ostrom server later in the course.
mkdir
This command name stands for "make a directory".
It creates a new folder (or directory). If no path is specified, the new directory is created in the current directory.
# start in your home directory
cd ~
# create a directory named "unixclass"
# with a subdirectory named "testdir"
mkdir unixclass
mkdir unixclass/testdir
# change current directory directly to "testdir"
cd unixclass/testdir
# go to the parent directory (i.e. unixclass)
# and print the working directory
cd ..
pwd
touch
This command creates an empty file with the given name.
# Go to /home/<your username>/unixclass
cd ~/unixclass
# Create an empty file named "hello.txt"
touch hello.txt
# List the files in the directory to verify that worked
ls
cp
and mv
These commands stand for "copy" and "move," respectively.
They copy / move files and directories to the specified location.
Wildcards symbols such as "*" or "?" are commonly used to copy multiple files with a single command.
The symbol "*" stands for any number of alphanumeric characters.
The symbol "?" stands for a single alphanumeric character.
# Start in ~/unixclass
cd ~/unixclass
# copy the file named arrayDat.txt into your unix_class directory
cp /net/ostrom/data/dropbox/arrayDat.txt .
ls
# copy all the files with suffix "array”
# into the current directory
cp /net/ostrom/data/dropbox/array* .
ls
# copy any file whose extension is "txt"
cp /net/ostrom/data/dropbox/*.txt .
ls
# copy all files
cp /net/ostrom/data/dropbox/* .
ls
rmdir
and rm
rmdir
only removes empty directories, rm
removes both directories and files.
rm
needs -r
flag to remove directories.
# Start in ~/unixclass
cd ~/unixclass
# Create a temporary directory
mkdir trash
# create copies of arrayDat.txt in the temporary directory
cp arrayDat.txt trash/arrayDat1.txt
cp arrayDat.txt trash/arrayDat2.txt
cp arrayDat.txt trash/arrayDat3.txt
cp arrayDat.txt trash/arrayDat4.txt
ls trash
# Try to delete the directory with `rmdir`
rmdir trash
# Try to delete the directory with `rm -r`
rm -r trash