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

Tim McIntire, Consultant, Freelance Writer
Photo of Tim McIntire
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:  22078 views
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Wrap-up

After running through this tutorial, you should have the basic knowledge to navigate a UNIX file system from the command line and work with files and directories. You should experiment with the commands listed throughout this text and closely examine the man page for any item you wish to learn more about.

Future tutorials in the series will cover specific applications ( vi, for instance) in detail and cover shell tricks and tips. In the meantime, feel free to experiment with a test user; in short order, you'll likely find yourself whizzing through command-line options faster than you could imagine pointing and clicking with your mouse!

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static.content.url=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/js/artrating/
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TutorialTitle=UNIX tips and tricks for a new user, Part 1: File maintenance tools
publish-date=09262006
author1-email=Tim.McIntire@gmail.com
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