Working with terminal

Beknazar
3 min readFeb 18, 2021

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We didn’t always have a nice-looking interface on our screen

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminal

In this article, we will learn how to work with a terminal on your laptop/pc. Note, this is a beginner's tutorial.

We didn’t always have a nice-looking interface on our screen where we could move the mouse around, click things to open or drag things to different locations, and so on. Early days of computers we used to send specific commands to our computer through a terminal and the computer would take this command read it and execute it accordingly.

In the IT world, we still use a terminal daily for different purposes. To begin, you will need to know and be able to use the basic commands:

  1. Navigation commands.
  2. Create and delete commands.

Navigation commands

All commands will be Linux-based. macOS users can use their regular terminal for windows users I suggest installing the GitBush terminal(install git, GitBush terminal is part of it).

  • pwd will display the current location.
  • ls will list all files in the current location.
  • cd <path> will navigate to a specified path(used without <>).
  • cd .. will navigate one layer back in the file system hierarchy.

Create and delete commands

  • mkdir <directoryName>will create a directory in the current location.
  • touch <fileName> will create a file in the current location.
  • rm -rf <filePath> will remove a file or a folder by a specified path. Note, it will not ask for confirmation and it will delete permanently. Be extremely careful while practicing.

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