Other Things to Explore

First up, some additional commands that come standard on most Unix-like systems.

• The find command is used to recursively search through a directory and all its subdirectories for files.
  • find by itself will recursively search through all subdirectories, printing the path of every directory and file it finds.

treehouse:~/workspace$ find
.
./statue.txt
./library
./library/periodicals
./library/fiction
./library/fiction/neal_stephenson
./library/fiction/neal_stephenson/snow_crash.txt
./library/fiction/kim_stanley_robinson
./library/fiction/kim_stanley_robinson/red_mars.txt
./library/fiction/kim_stanley_robinson/green_mars.txt

• You can limit the results to files whose name matches a particular pattern with the -name option.
  • You can use wildcards in the pattern to match partial names:find -name "*.txt"
  • Note that a wildcard expression must be surrounded by quotes, or the shell will attempt to expand it and it will never reach the find command.

treehouse:~/workspace$ find -name "*.txt"
./statue.txt
./library/fiction/neal_stephenson/snow_crash.txt
./library/fiction/kim_stanley_robinson/red_mars.txt
./library/fiction/kim_stanley_robinson/green_mars.txt
./library/fiction/kim_stanley_robinson/blue_mars.txt
./library/fiction/kim_stanley_robinson/red_moon.txt
./library/non-fiction/terminal.txt
./mall/dullards/jewelry/catalog.txt
./mall/starbunks/menu.txt
./mall/map.txt
./cart.txt
./pigeon.txt
./sparrow.txt

You can read more about find here.

• The grep command is used to print lines in a file that match a particular pattern.
  • cd library/non-fiction/
  • grep 'Windows' terminal.txt
  • grep 'Mac' terminal.txt

treehouse:~/workspace$ cd library/non-fiction/
treehouse:~/workspace/library/non-fiction$ grep 'Windows' terminal.txt
  * [Activate Virtualbox Windows] On Windows, it's called Command Prompt, although there are alternatives like PowerShell.
. You might wonder why we're not showing the Windows way first... Let me explain.
* This isn't true with Windows. You can still do a lot from the Command Prompt on Windows, but most commands are run in a different way, and will only work on Windows.
* But, like I said, we'll have info near the end of the course for those who need to apply what they learn on Windows.
treehouse:~/workspace/library/non-fiction$ grep 'Mac' terminal.txt
  * [Activate Finder] On Mac and Linux machines, it's usually simply called Terminal.
In this course, we're going to be focusing on the terminal as used in the Linux and Mac operating systems.
* These compatible OSs include Linux and Mac OS.
* We'll also show you how to access the terminal on Mac and Linux systems.

You can read more about grep here.

Now for a couple programs that will let you edit text files within your terminal.

• The vi program, where "vi" stands for "visual", is the default editing program installed on most Unix-like operating systems.
• It's not fancy, but it is widely available. At some point you are likely to find you have to use it, because it's the only editor available on the system you're working on.
• Some developers love it, though, and use it for their daily work, especially an expanded version called vim (which stands for "vi improved").
  • vim has to be installed separately, though, so we'll focus on vi here.
• Let me use vi to edit a new file, which I'll call myfile.txt: vi myfile.txt
• vi has two important modes.
• When it starts, it's in "command mode".
  • You don't want to press random keys while you're in command mode, because you'll be issuing commands you probably don't want to.
  • You'll want to press the "i" key, which puts vi into "insert mode".

Now that I'm in insert mode, I can type freely, and
the text will appear on the screen like I'm used to.

• To get back into command mode, I press the Esc key in the corner of my keyboard.
• Once I'm back in command mode, I can issue commands to save the file and quit the editor.
• I type ":", and the cursor will appear in the lower-right corner of the screen, waiting for a command.
• Then I type "w", and press Enter. vi will write the contents of the editor out to the file.
• Now to quit the editor.
• I type ":" again, and the cursor reappears in the lower-right.
• Now I type "q", and press Enter, and vi will quit, returning us to the shell.
• cat myfile.txt

You can read more about vi here.

vi can be a powerful editor, but it's not very friendly to beginners. Now let's look at an alternative editor.

• The nano editor is installed by default on some, but not all Unix-like systems.
• It's already available on the Linux OS used by Workspaces.
• The command is similar to the vi command; you just type nano and the name of the file you want to edit: nano file2.txt

Editing here is pretty straightforward; just type.
Use the commands at the bottom when you are ready to save
and exit. The ^ symbol stands for the Ctrl key. So to
write out your file, press Ctrl-o. To exit Nano, press
Ctrl-x.

• Installing nano:
  • Info for installing on Linux is here.
  • Macs should come with nano pre-installed.
  • On Windows, a reliably-working nano is only available under Git Bash, not the Command Prompt. More info at this link.

You can read more about nano here.