Linux terminal commands

Linux has a very powerful command-line interface, which is invoked by typing commands
into a terminal or xterm window directly (like the DOS/CMD window in Windows). This
small note can help you get started learning some of these commands; remember that much
more detailed descriptions are available online, in particular:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-6.2-Manual/getting-started-guide/ch-doslinux.html
http://www.hscripts.com/tutorials/linux-commands/

In the labs, click on Applications->accessories->terminal to open up the terminal

window which gives you access to the command prompt. If you log into the machines from
home using PuTTY, then you type these commands in the PuTTY window.
Here are some common commands:

• mkdir: make directory (a directory is often called a folder in windows). A directory is

a special file on the storage device that can contain other files. For instance, ‘mkdir
cs1073’ will create the directory/folder cs1073 in the present working directory.
• pwd: print working directory. Shows where you are in the file system (i.e. are you at
your top directory, or deep in nested folders)? For instance, right after I log in, if I
type ‘pwd’, I get:
main205>pwd
/home/whaley
• cd : change directory. This is the way to move around in the filesystem. For instance,
if I type cd cs1073 then I will change into the subdirectory (a subdirectory is a folder
which is contained within another folder) cs1073.
⇒ There are two special directory handles that you use when issuing command like cd.
These are:
1. ‘./’: the current directory the command prompt is in. For example ‘./xc2f’
runs the program xc2f which can be found in the present working directory.
2. ‘../’: the directory immediately above the current one. Can be repeated as often
as you like. For instance ‘../../xc2f’ runs the program xc2f which is found in
the directory two levels above the current one.
⇒ When you provide where the file is to be found, this is called the path. So for
‘../../xc2f’, ‘../../’ is the relative path (because the path is relative to the
current working directory), and ‘xc2f’ is the file name. A fully qualified path or
absolute path is one that is not dependent on the directory where you currently
are. For instance ‘/home/whaley/cs1073’ is a fully qualified path.
• ls : list. Prints out what files are available in the present working directory. Important
flags include ‘-A’, which says to list hidden files as well as normal files, and ‘-l’ which
says to list with long format (providing more information about all files.
• man : manual. Print man page of provided command. For instance, ‘man ls’ provides
the system help on using the command ls.

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• cp: copy. Copy a file to another file. For instance ‘cp c2f.f90 f2c.f90’ will copy
the file c2f.f90 so that the same data exists as the file f2c.f90 in the same directory.
– Linux filename commands have the special character ‘.’, which means “Using the
same filename” when given as a target for commands like cp or mv. For instance
‘cp c2f.f90 ../.’ will duplicate the file c2f.f90 into the directory above this
one, using the filename c2f.f90.
• mv: move. Copy a file to a new file/path, and delete the original file. For instance, ‘mv
c2f.f90 celc2fair.f90’ will result in replicating the file c2f.f90, and then deleting
the original filename (c2f.f90).
• rm: remove. Delete the provided file(s). For instance ‘rm c2f.o’ will permenently
delete the file c2f.o. Use this command with care, since you can delete every file
you own if you are not careful. I recommend that you always use the -i flag, which
will cause rm to ask you if you really want to delete. You can ensure this by typing
‘alias rm rm -i’ before ever using rm.
• rmdir: remove directory. Delete the specified directory. This command only works if
the directory is empty.
• history: print a listing of most recent commands the user has entered. You can then
repeat a command using the !. For instance !110 will repeat the command with the
label 110 from the history listing.
→ For most shells, hitting the up arrow will take you one command back in your
history, the down arrow will take you one command forward in your history,
and the left and right arrows allow you to move around in these remembered
commands so that you can edit them.
• cat : concatonate. Takes a list of text files, and prints them to screen, starting with
the first file in the list and ending with the last. If used with only one file, it types its
contents to the screen.
• diff: difference. Compares two different text files, and displays any differences line-
by-line to the screen. If there is no output, then the files contain the exact same text.
Very useful for making your output match someone else’s exactly, or to see what has
changed between versions of a program.
• grep: global regular expresion print: search for given pattern/patterns in the provide
list of files and print any occurances line-by-line to the screen. Has simple form grep
pattern [files].
• gfortran : invoke the Fortran 95 compiler. For example: ‘gfortran -g -Wall -o
xc2f celc2fair.f90’ will compile the program that has been saved to the filename
celc2fair.f90 in the present working directory, and place the executable in the
filename xc2f in the same directory (under windows, a .exe file extension will be
automatically added to the filename, but this is not true for linux).
• mail yhan@cs.utsa.edu < program.f90: mail the file program.f90 to the TA. You
whould replace program.f90 with the filename of your program. You should have
comments describing your name and any collaborators at the top of the file.
• pine: a simple non-graphical e-mail client

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 Example session
The following is an actual screen dump of a terminal session showing how one can use some
of the outlined commands (I have added some blank lines to make it slightly easier to follow).
I start on my office machine (drteeth), and I log into the machine main201.cs.utsa.edu
(I do this using ssh since my machine runs linux; OS X users can also use ssh; Windows
users can use PuTTY). In this session, I create a directory for all of my CS 1073 files, and
then I create subdirectories so that it is easy to find files later. Note that the sentences
prefaced with # were not typed in by me or printed out by the terminal: they are comments
that I have adde to explain what I was doing during the session.
The prompt is where you type the commands in the terminal window. Different users
have different prompts (and you can change them if you know how). My prompt is
machine name>. So, on main201 it will be ‘main201>’. Your prompt may differ.
The machines main201 through main205 should be available for remote login to linux 24
hours day. Other machines are available or not depending on if they have been booted into
Linux or Windows. These machines include ant00 – ant34, bat00 – bat55, cat00 – cat32,
dog00 – dog62.
Remember that if you type the first few letters of a file name and then hit the Tab key, the
shell will usually autocomplete the file name!

drteeth>ssh main201
whaley@main201’s password:
Last login: Tue Jul 21 15:47:13 2009 from drteeth.cs.utsa.edu
main201>pwd
/home/whaley
main201>mkdir cs1073 # create class dir in home area
main201>cd cs1073/ # go to class subdir
main201>ls # no files in subdir yet
main201>ls -a # -a shows hidden/virtual files
./ ../
main201>cp ../lec/* . # copy all files in ../lec
main201>ls # see what files I copied in
basics.pdf centigrade.f90 intro.pdf loser.f90 xconvert*
c2f.exe* centigrade.f90~ labinst.pdf syll.pdf xpoke*

main201>rm *.exe x* *.pdf centigrade.f90~ # get rid of unneeded files

main201>ls
centigrade.f90 loser.f90
main201>mv centigrade.f90 cent2faih.f90 # get better name for program
main201>ls
cent2faih.f90 loser.f90

main201>gfortran -Wall -g -o xc2f cent2faih.f90 # compile program

main201>ls # see if executable is there
cent2faih.f90 loser.f90 xc2f*

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main201>./xc2f # run program
What is the temperature in Centigrade?
100
100.0000 degrees Centigrade is 212.0000 degrees in Fahrenheit

main201>gfortran -Wall -g -o xloser loser.f90 # compile program 2

main201>./xloser # run prog 2
Please enter an integer between 1 and 500
2
Please enter your first name:
Clint
Thanks Clint! Now please enter your last name:
Whaley
Clint Whaley is a complete loser!
Clint Whaley is a complete loser!

main201>ls
cent2faih.f90 loser.f90 xc2f* xloser*
main201>rm x* # get rid of executables
main201>ls # see files that remain
cent2faih.f90 loser.f90
main201>mkdir lab1 # create directory for 1st lab
main201>mv *.f90 lab1/. # put f90 files into it
main201>ls
lab1/
main201>ls lab1/ # make sure they are there
cent2faih.f90 loser.f90

main201>mkdir asg1 # create dir for asg 1

main201>cp lab1/cent2faih.f90 asg1/faih2cent.f90# use c2f as start for f2c
main201>ls asg1
faih2cent.f90
main201>cd asg1 ; ls # cd to asg1, list files
faih2cent.f90

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 Additional Command-line Information

• File completion: when typing, the shell can autocomplete most words for you. Type
the first several characters of the word, and then hit the tab key. If the filename is
not autocompleted, there may be other filenames that begin with the same prefix, so
you need to type a few more characters and hit tab again until the prefix you have
typed is unambiguous. In the bash shell, hitting tab twice will give a list of possible
completions, while ctrl-D does the same for the tcsh shell.
• Unix wild-carding: On the command line the * character means ”match anything”,
while ? means match any one character, while the brackets provide a way to match a
range or list of certain characters. Here’s some examples:
– ls *.dat: lists all files in current directory ending in .dat.
– ls *hello* : lists all files with the word hello embedded in their names
– cat output[0-9].out: prints out all files with the form output followed by a
single digit, followed by .out to the screen.
– cat output[G,B].out: prints the contents of the file outputB.out followed by
the contents of outputG.out to the screen.
– ls hello?.f90 : lists all filenames that consist of hello, followed by any char-
acter, followed by .f90.
• Redirection and pipes. Unix has a facility allowing you to redirect input and
output of programs into files, and to connect the output of one program to another
using a pipe:
– Output redirection: The > placed after a program/command tells unix to
redirect the standard output of a program or command (which usually goes to
the screen) to another place. It is usually used to redirect output to a file.
Therefore, the command:
cat bob1.out bob2.out > bob_combined.out
will create a new file which has the contents of bob1.out in its first lines, followed
by the contents of bob2.out.
– Input redirection: The command < redirects the contents of a file (usually) to
the standard input of a program. Therefore, the command:
/xprogram < test.in
will use the contents of test.in as input to the program xprogram. It will be
pretty much like you ran xprogram, and then manually typed the contents of
test.in manually in response to the input prompts from the program.
– Piping: you can pipe the standard out of one command/program directly to
another command/program using the pipe symbol, |. This allows you to hook
up a series of filters that all take the output of some program, modify it, pass it
on for as many filters as you like. For example:
∗ cat test.in | ./xprogram.in is the same as the input redirection given
above.
∗ ls -l *.out | grep -i joe: This will cause ls to generate a list of all

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filenames ending in .out, which will be passed as input to the grep com-
mand, which will then print any such file that also contains the word joe
embedded in it (irrespective of case).