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Introduction to the Terminal

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Summary

1:28 with Jay McGavren

You've had to learn a syntax that's unique and sometimes strange. But the hard part's over! Now you should have a solid foundation for your future work in the terminal.

Thanks for joining us on this tour of the terminal!

  • We've shown you how to issue commands in the shell.
  • We've seen how to pass options and other arguments to commands: ls -a mall/
  • We've seen convenient shortcuts, like command history.
  • As well as how to use tab completion to complete commands and arguments.
  • We've learned how to switch between directories: cd mall/
  • And how directories are used to compose relative paths: cat starbunks/menu.txt
  • As well as absolute paths: cd /home
  • We've learned about shortcuts for directories.
    • How . refers to the current directory: cd .
    • How .. refers to the parent directory: cd ..
    • And how ~ refers to the current user's home directory: cd ~
  • We've seen how to use the shell's wildcard expansion to work with a group of files at once: cat *.txt
  • We've learned how to view the contents of files using the less pager: less cart.txt
  • We've seen how to copy, move, and delete files and directories: mv cart.txt park/
  • And we've learned how to review details of these various programs using the built-in manual: man mv

Project Ideas

Noah Veltman has created a murder mystery you can solve in the shell.

Further Reading

You can level up your shell skills using this guide.

Other Treehouse Courses

Now that you've mastered working in the Terminal, you're ready to learn some of those awesome programs that work at the command line!

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    Thanks for joining us on this tour of the Terminal. 0:00
    We've shown you how to issue commands in this shell. 0:03
    We've seen how to pass options and other arguments to commands. 0:06
    We've seen convenient shortcuts like command history, 0:10
    as well as how to use Tab completion to complete commands and arguments. 0:13
    We've learned how to switch between directories and 0:18
    how directories are used to compose relative paths, as well as absolute paths. 0:21
    We've learned about shortcuts for directories, how, 0:29
    ., refers to the current directory. 0:31
    How, .., refers to the parent directory, and 0:33
    how tilde refers to the current user's home directory. 0:37
    We've seen how to use the Shell's wildcard expansion to work with a group of 0:44
    files at once. 0:48
    We've learned how to view the contents of files using the less pager. 0:50
    We've seen how to copy, move, and delete files and directories. 0:55
    And we've learned how to review details of these various programs using the built in 1:00
    manual. 1:04
    You've had to learn a syntax that's unique and sometimes strange, but 1:05
    the hard part's over. 1:09
    Now you should have a solid foundation for your future work in the Terminal. 1:10
    Your next step is to practice because that's the key to making 1:15
    the knowledge stick. 1:17
    Be sure to check the teacher's notes for project ideas, further reading, 1:19
    and links to other Treehouse content that will help you use your new understanding 1:22
    of the Terminal. 1:26
    Thanks for watching. 1:27

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