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UNIX tips and tricks for a new user, Part 1: File maintenance tools

Tim McIntire, Consultant, Freelance Writer

Tim McIntire works as a consultant and co-founder of Cluster Corporation, a market leader in HPCC software, support, and consulting. He also contributes periodically to IBM developerWorks and Apple Developer Connection. Tim's research, conducted while leading the computer science effort at Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Digital Image Analysis Lab, has been published in a variety of journals, including Concurrency and Computation and IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. You can visit TimMcIntire.net to learn more.

Summary: Systems administrators can use a number of programs to maintain files in a UNIX® system from the command line. In this tutorial, you'll experiment with commands, such as cd, cp, and tar, to navigate a UNIX file system from the command line and work with files and directories. The cd command changes directories, cp duplicates files or directories, and tar quickly groups files into an archive. You'll also learn how to deal with file permissions and perform simple input/output.

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Date: 26 Sep 2006
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (72 KB | 22 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 19799 views
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Before you start

Learn what to expect from this tutorial, and how to get the most out of it.

About this series

This four-part tutorial series covers UNIX® basics from a user perspective. This initial tutorial is a good brush-up for users who have been away from UNIX-like operating systems for some time. It's also useful for brand-new UNIX users coming from a Windows® background, because it uses references and comparisons to Windows. Later tutorials in the series will cover specific applications (vi, for instance) in detail and discuss shell tricks and tips.

About this tutorial

Systems administrators can use a number of programs to maintain files in a UNIX system from the command line. More exist than the basic ones demonstrated here, but they're all fundamental parts of your UNIX system. You can use the mv command to reposition and rename files and directories. The cp command duplicates one or more files or directories. An application called tar can quickly group files together into a single archive. This tutorial also discusses traversing the file system, dealing with file permissions, and simple input/output so that new UNIX users have a base to work from.

Objectives

The objective of this tutorial is to make new UNIX users comfortable moving around on the command line and dealing with files. It focuses on common command-line utilities that manipulate files, but file permissions and input/output are also discussed to give you a complete picture of commands you need to use on a day-to-day basis.

Prerequisites

You need a basic understanding of computers and files for this tutorial, but no experience in a UNIX-like operating system is expected. You should understand what directories (folders) and files are and be able to log in to your account on a UNIX-like operating system. If you're familiar with the DOS or Microsoft® Windows command line, you'll notice similarities, but users who have never used any sort of command line will do just fine.

System requirements

Access to a user account on any computer running any UNIX-like operating system is all you need to complete this tutorial. UNIX-like operating systems include the IBM AIX® operating system, Linux®, Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), and Mac OS® X (using Terminal to access the command line), among many others.

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