Note Don’t type the [] brackets when using the command - cd [dirname] means you’ll type cd Documents.

Being lazy

  • Press ↑ and ↓ to scroll through previous commands. It can save you a lot of typing.
  • Instead of typing out a long file/directory name, type the first few letters and then press tab. It will automatically fill in the rest of the filename. Use this every time you’re typing anything on the command line.
  • On a mac, you can drag a file or folder from Finder onto the Terminal and it will automatically type the full path

If you installed CoreUtils, you can use the OS X command for almost everything

OS X command description Windows version
pwd Prints working directory — use this to check that you’re in the directory you want chdir
cd [dirname] Changes directory, moves you into the folder named dirname same
cd .. Moves you up one directory, e.g. from Desktop/foundations/class-1 to Desktop/foundations. same
ls: lists subdirectories (and files). ls -lah is nicer, though. dir  
find Tries to find a file without waiting for the database to update - can search by name, size, date modified, etc. This is a good reference dir (see here

Moving/editing/downloading files

OS X command description Windows version
mv [source] [destination] Moves a file from one place to another move
cp [source] [destination] Copies a file from one place to another (so now you have two) copy
rm [file] Deletes (removes) a file del
mkdir [directoryname] Creates a directory same
rmdir [directoryname] Deletes (removes) a directory same
tar cvf [filename] [filename] [filename]... Compresses (zips) files up into a .tar.gz file Use zip files + 7za
tar xvf [filename] Extracts (unzips) a .tar.gz file Use zip files + 7za
curl [url] Downloads a file, but streams it into your terminal window same (need to install cURL)
curl -O [url] Downloads a file, saving it  
wget [url] Downloads a file, saving it (yes, curl and wget are pretty similar) same (need to instal wget)  

Looking at individual files

OS X command description Windows version
cat [filename] Displays the contents of a file  
wc [filename] Displays the word count of a file (OS X)  
wc -l [filename] Displays the line count of a file (OS X)  
head -n 10 [filename] Displays the first 10 lines of a file (OS X)  
tail -n 20 [filename] Displays the last 20 lines of a file (OS X)  
more [filename] Displays the contents of a file one screen at a time (spacebar to continue) same
grep [text] [filename] Show all of the lines in filename that contain text (OS X) findstr or find
sort Sorts the lines of a file same
uniq Removes duplicate adjacent lines of a file  

Amusing ones to look up

  • banner
  • cowsay
  • say

Others you might find useful if you love the command line

  • sed
  • awk
  • vi/vim

Escaping commands

Has something gone wrong? Taking too long? Hold down Control and hit C, a.k.a. Ctrl+C. You can also try Esc, q, and typing exit.

Learning more/finding more

man pages are manuals that you can use from the command line. They’re usually terrible and it’s easier to just google for examples.

man grep would give you the entry for grep, and then you’d use the d and u to navigate up and down. You should probably just google grep man page or grep examples, though.