Overview of Computer

Workshop
Unit-3, Lecture – 2
Some more commands related to Files
■ wc: It is used to display the total number of lines and characters
in one or more files.
■ By default it displays four-columnar output. First column shows
number of lines present in a file specified, second column shows number of
words present in the file, third column shows number of characters present
in file and fourth column itself is the file name which are given as argument.
Syntax: wc filename
Options:
wc -w filename
wc -l filename
wc -c filename
■ sort: It sorts its output into alphabetical order line by line.
Syntax: sort filename
Options:
sort -r Reverse normal order
sort -n Sort in numeric order
sort -nr Sort in reverse numeric order
■ head : It prints the first 10 lines of a file.
Syntax: head filename
Options:
head -n filename (print first n lines of the file)
■ tail: It prints the last 10 lines of a file.
Syntax: tail filename
Options:
tail -n filename (print last n lines of the file)
tail +n filename (starts printing from the (n+1)th line)
■ cmp: It prints the first place where two files differ. cmp is used when
one wants to be sure that two files really have the same contents. It is
fast and it works on any kind of file.
Syntax: cmp filename1 filename2

■ diff : It reports on all lines that are changed, added and deleted. It is
used when the files are expected to be somewhat different and one
wants to know exactly which lines differ. diff works only on files of text.
Syntax: diff filename1 filename2

■ grep: It prints the line from the file matching with specified pattern.
Syntax: grep pattern filename
Option:
grep -v pattern filename (prints lines from the file not matching with the pattern)
Pipe
■A pipe is a form of redirection (transfer of standard output to
some other destination) that is used in Linux and other Unix-like
operating systems to send the output of one
command/program/process to another command/program/process
for further processing.
■It is denoted by a vertical bar (|).
■ E.g. The next command line displays the number of files in a
directory. The wc (word count) command with the –w (words)
option displays the number of words in its standard input or in a
file you specify on the command line:
$ ls | wc -w
Assignment -1 (Additional Questions)
14. Check the output of the following command:
cmp reginfo personalinfo
diff reginfo personalinfo
15. Write a command to count the number of files in the
current working directory and display that number.
Linux Filesystem
■ Filesystem: A filesystem provides the way in which files and
directories are placed logically for storage and retrieval on a storage
disk.
■ The general-purpose computer system needs to store data
systematically so that we can easily access the files in less time.
■ Linux Filesystem: Linux has hierarchical filesystem much like an
upside-down tree, with root (/) at the base of the file system and all
other directories spreading from there.
■Each directory has a name and can hold other files and directories.
Directories, in turn, are arranged under other directories and so forth in
a tree like organization.
■All other directories in Linux can be accessed from the root directory.
Linux Filesystem structure
Linux File System Features
■ Specifying paths: Linux does not use the backslash (\) to separate the
components; it uses forward slash (/) as an alternative. For example, as in
Windows, the data may be stored in C:\ My Documents\ Work, whereas, in
Linux, it would be stored in /home/ My Document/ Work.
■ Partition, Directories, and Drives: Linux does not use drive letters to
organize the drive as Windows does. In Linux, we cannot tell whether we are
addressing a partition, a network device, or an "ordinary" directory and a Drive.
■Case Sensitivity: Linux file system is case sensitive. It distinguishes between
lowercase and uppercase file names.
■File Extensions: In Linux, a file may have the extension '.txt,' but it is not
necessary that a file should have a file extension.
■Hidden files: Linux distinguishes between standard files and hidden files,
mostly the configuration files are hidden in Linux OS. Usually, we don't need to
access or read the hidden files. The hidden files in Linux are represented by a
dot (.) before the file name (e.g., .ignore).
Pathnames
■ A path is a unique location to a file or a folder in a file system of
an OS.A path to a file is a combination of / and alpha-numeric
characters.
■Absolute Path-name: An absolute path is defined as specifying the
location of a file or directory from the root directory(/). In other
words, we can say that an absolute path is a complete path from
start of actual file system from / directory.
■Relative Path-name: Relative path is defined as the path related to
the present working directly(pwd). It starts at your current
directory.
Links
■ In your Linux file system, a link is a connection between a file name and
the actual data on the disk. More than one filename can link to the same
data.
■There are two types of links in Linux OS:
■Hard Link:
■ They are the low-level links. It links more than one filename with the same Inode
and it represents the physical location of a file.
■ When hard link is created for a file, it directly points to the Inode of the original
file in the disk space, which means no new Inode is created.
■ Directories are not created using hard links and they can not cross filesystem
boundaries.
■ When the source file is removed or moved, then hard links are not affected.
■ Command:
ln original_filename link_name
■Soft link or Symbolic Link:
■ Soft links are very common. It represents a virtual or abstract location of
the file.
■ It is just like the shortcuts created in Windows.
■ A soft link doesn't contain any information or content of the linked file,
instead it has a pointer to the location of the linked file.
■ In other words, a new file is created with new Inode, having a pointer to the
Inode location of the original file.
■ It is used to create link between directories and can cross filesystem
boundaries.
■ When the source file is removed or moved, then soft links are not updated.
■ Command:
ln -s original_filename link_name
File Descriptor and Inode
■ Linux makes a clear distinction between a file and the information
about a file.
■ Each file consists of a sequence of bytes. The file does not include
any control information, such as its length or an end-of-file (EOF)
delimiter.
■ All information needed by the file system to handle a file is
included in a data structure called an inode.
■Each file has its own inode, which the file system uses to identify
the file.
Information in Inode
■File type
■Number of hard links associated with the file
■File length in bytes
■ Device ID (i.e., an identifier of the device containing the file)
■ Inode number that identifies the file within the filesystem
■UID of the file owner
■User group ID of the file
■Several timestamps that specify the inode status change time, the
last access time, and the last modify time
■Access rights and file mode