The document provides an introduction to basic Unix commands for navigating directories, viewing files, and manipulating files. It explains the directory structure with users' home directories located under /Home. Common commands are described like ls to list files, more to view files, and cp, mv, rm to copy, move and remove files. Wildcards can be used with commands to match multiple files. Man pages provide documentation for all commands.
The document provides an introduction to basic Unix commands for navigating directories, viewing files, and manipulating files. It explains the directory structure with users' home directories located under /Home. Common commands are described like ls to list files, more to view files, and cp, mv, rm to copy, move and remove files. Wildcards can be used with commands to match multiple files. Man pages provide documentation for all commands.
The document provides an introduction to basic Unix commands for navigating directories, viewing files, and manipulating files. It explains the directory structure with users' home directories located under /Home. Common commands are described like ls to list files, more to view files, and cp, mv, rm to copy, move and remove files. Wildcards can be used with commands to match multiple files. Man pages provide documentation for all commands.
The document provides an introduction to basic Unix commands for navigating directories, viewing files, and manipulating files. It explains the directory structure with users' home directories located under /Home. Common commands are described like ls to list files, more to view files, and cp, mv, rm to copy, move and remove files. Wildcards can be used with commands to match multiple files. Man pages provide documentation for all commands.
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4 Basics of Unix
You should read through this section, ideally sitting in front of a terminal so you can try out the various commands.
4.1 Introduction The Unix operating system is accessed partly through the X-Window interface and partly through Terminal Window into which you type commands. This section covers the basic U NIX commands that you will need to use in the Terminal Window.
4.2 Entering Commands
Commands are typed into an active terminal window, however the command is not executed by the system until your press the R ETURN or ←- key. Note also that all commands are case sensitive (capital and lower case letter are different).
4.3 The Directory Structure
All information, be it a program source, letters, programs, or system applications, are all held in “files”. These files are grouped together in “directories”. The directories are then arranged as a “tree”, starting from the system root directory. This is shown schematically is figure 1
The structure is divided into user and system files, being the files that belong to the users of the system and the files that are part of the general system. On this system the users file are under /Home, while the system one are mostly under /usr (the name is historical!).
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Your files are located under /Home in a directory which have the same name as your username. So in the above example if your username is s0312345 then your files are located under
/Home/s0312345
This is known as your home directory. All files below this directory belong to you, and you can do anything to them, (read, write, delete etc.).
Path Names
Filenames can either be absolute, where the file names defines the whole path from the system root (/) directory. Such filenames start with (/) as above. Alternatively filenames can be relative to where “you are” in the file structure. In this case the name does not have a leading (/). For example, if your username is s0312345 then when you login the terminal screen is initially in your home directory, being /Home/s0312345. This is called your present working directory. So when in this directory the file checkpoint1.c can be referred to as either:
where the first example is its absolute name and the second is its name relative to your present working directory. This all sounds rather complex, but is actually very intuitive once you have tried it out for yourself!
4.4 File and Directory Names
File and directory names can be up to 32 characters long and can be any combination of letters, digits and punctuation characters -+., :;. There are however some rules, and basic guidelines,
1. Directories or files names that start with a dot (“.”) are called hidden. These will not appear on normal directory listings, see below. Such files are normally used to hold user options to various applications.
2. Most filenames are of the form <basename>.<extn> where <extn> is used to specify the type of information in the file.
3. It is possible to use other punctuation characters but they can clash with wild-card char- acters and other special characters, so should be avoided.
4. Spaces are not allowed.
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4.5 Directory Manipulation The following commands are used to check and set your present working directory: pwd show the present working directory cd change directory to home directory cd newdir change directory to newdir (newdir can be absolute or relative) cd .. change directory to parent directory (one-up) Your prompt changes as you change directory to show the basename of the present working directory. New directories can be created, and deleted with: mkdir newdir make directory newdir (newdir can be absolute or relative) rmdir olddir remove directory olddir. You will get an error message if the directory you try and remove contains either files or other directories.
4.6 List of Files and Directories
Generating lists of the contents of directories is obtained with the very flexible command ls which has many dozens of options. The most common are: ls list of file and directories in current directory (simple output) ls -l list of file and directories in current directory (long format) ls -a list of all files, including hidden files. (see section on filenames)
4.7 Viewing and printing files
The contents of a file can be “paged” to the screen with the utility more. If you want to view the contents of file Fred.java then the command is,
more Fred.java
If the file Fred.java is longer than the current terminal screen the following keys come into play, these being. S PACE Forward one screen D Forward half screen R ETURN Forward one line B Back one screen H Rather cryptic help screen Q Quit Plain text files can be printed using
lp <filename>
where <filename> is the name of the file to be printed. This printer is free and useful for short program listings. If using the CPLab L INUX this will appear on the laser printer in the CPLab, if using the remote connection via the Microlab, this will appear on the EUCS “lineprinter” in room 3305.
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4.8 Manipulation files Files are normally created with an editor emacs, or from the output of programs or applications. Other useful file manipulation commands are: cp file1 file2 make a copy of file1, named file2 mv file1 file move file1 to file2 (rename) rm file1 remove, or delete file1 These utilities can also be used with directories in the filenames, in particular mv can be used to move files into a directory for example if checkpoints is the name of a directory, then mv CheckPoint-1.java checkpoints mv CheckPoint-2.java checkpoints will move the two files, CheckPoint-1.java and CheckPoint-2.java into the directory checkpoints. Warning: files that are deleted with rm are really gone. There is no WASTE BASKET to fish things “out-off”.
4.9 Wild-cards in file names
Wild-cards characters allow matching of a range of filenames. The two commonly used wild- cards are: * matches any string of characters ? matches any single character so for example rm *.class removes all files with extension .class ls CheckPoint-?.java lists all files called CheckPoint-<any>.java where <any> is any character
4.10 E-Mail You do not have a seperate E- MAIL account on this system. You sould continue to use your University SMS account which is available through M OZILLA.
man pages All U NIX commands, most applications and most functions are all documented via the on-line system manual pages. These are very complete, usually being written by the actual programmer who implemented the command or application. As a result they usually assume a level of knowledge about the system well above that possessed by the average (never mind the novice) user. The quality, readability and length of man pages is very variable, however they do usually contain the correct information! The man pages are accessed by, • Type man <command> in the terminal window. For example to get the man page for ls you simply type man ls. This will output the manual page to the terminal window one page at a time with the same page commands as more (see above).
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4.11 The Shell When you type commands they are interpreted by the program called the shell. Under U NIX there are many different shells (eight I know of) all of which do the same basic task, but with subtle and annoying differences. All your accounts have been set-up to use bash (bourne again shell), which is used on about 50% of all U NIX system including all the E DINBURGH C OMPUTER S ERVICES (ECS) machines.
4.12 More Information
This section contains the “absolute minimum to get by” with U NIX. Extensive additional doc- umentations are available:
1. CP Lab “on-line” H ELP pages, link from Scientific Programming Home Page.
2. On-line via the U NIX H ELP pages written and maintained by the E DINBURGH C OMPUT- ING S ERVICE (ECS). Link from Scientific Programming Home Page.
3. ECS documentation available at a modest cost from J OB R ECEPTION IN ROOM 3210 or
G EORGE S QUARE L IBRARY.
4. Any and varied books on U NIX in the library and for purchase in bookshops.
Note: There are many “flavours” and “dialects” of U NIX which are superficially similar but with subtle and annoying differences. These differences mainly show-up in the system manage- ment tools which most users never need or use. For each system the definitive documentation is located in the man pages!
What Next? Now you have some practice of using the basic U NIX commands you should now read the next section on the emacs editor. You will need to use this to write your first JAVA program.
