Key Commands
In this section, we review some of the basic commands for moving around directories, changing filenames, copying, and so forth.
Understanding and navigating directories
The first question someone might ask when they launch the terminal is: Where am I? – i.e. what is the working directory the terminal is in? We figure that out with pwd
(which is short for print working directory). Typing this command in my terminal I get the following:
/home/jupyter-user3
Try this out in your environment:
Firstly, figure out which directory you are currently in by using the pwd
command. If you are in the home directory, great! If not, you can easily get there by typing in cd ~
, the tilde represents home. Using the ls
command, you can list the files in your directory. To create a new directory use the make directory command mkdir
followed by the name of your new directory. Finally, change your working to the new one using cd
.
pwd cd ~ ls mkdir mydir cd ~/mydir
Basics: Moving around in directories
These are the basic commands needed to move around in directories.
pwd #gets the full path of the present working directory ls #lists the files in the current working directory ls -l #similar to ls, but it gives additional information about each file (permission, size etc) ls -a #includes hidden files (those that begin with .name) in the list as well ls -R #lists subdirectories recursively ls -t #lists files in chronological order cd #brings you to the highest level of your home directory cd .. #moves one directory up cd ../../ #moves two directories up cd - #go back to the previous directory you were in cd~ #go to the home directory
File Creation and Deletion Commands
mkdir dir_name #creates a new directory rmdir dir_name #removes the empty directory rm file_name #removes the file rm -r dir_name #removes the directory, including its contents. It asks for confirmation before doing so. To stop, supply the <code>f</code> argument cp name path #copies the file/directory as specified in the path mv old_name new_name #moves the contents of the file/directory to the new location
Special Characters: Wildcards (*), Tildas (~), and periods (..,.)
In the examples above, you would have noticed that certain characters are used to imply a special meaning. For example to move one directory up you would type cd ..
. This ..
is special. Let’s look at the meaning of a few, pretty common, special characters.
On important character is the *
wildcard character. It basically means anything including the characters surrounding it. Thus ls m*
would list all files start with m
. We could type ls *ls*
to get a listing of all files that have the characters “ls” in them. It’s handy for finding types of scripts, such as all python scripts, which by convention end in .py
, so we would type ls *.py
.
Tilda or ~
is the next key character to remember. It is shorthand for your home directory or path. We’ll use directory and path interchangeably at times. Thus to cd ~
takes you to your home directory.
Two periods, or ..
refers to the parent directory of your current directory, i.e. cd ..
moves up a directory.
One period, or .
, is shorthand for your current directory. For example cp ~/demo/jupyterlab-slides.pdf .
copies jupyterlabs-slides.pdf
into the current directory.
Pipe | and Redirect>
One of the most important features of Unix-based systems is the ability to manipulate when data is going to the screen, a program, or into another file. Specifically, we’ll discuss piping and redirecting. Piping is done using the |
symbol and sends the output from what’s left of the pipe, to the program on the right of the pipe. Redirect >
puts the output of the left into the file in the right.
An example of a pipe that takes our history and pipes it to grep
which only prints lines that match.
history | grep ls
Output:
An example of redirecting that output to a file
history > myhistory.txt
Output:
Core Unix-based command-line commands
Shown below are some common Unix-based command-line commands. Remember, if you are trying to do something and you don’t know how, you can always use Google and there will be more than one helpful resource. Also, at the bottom are several that I find useful within my cheatsheet.
Finding files, directories and applications
find -name "*pattern*" # searches for *pattern* in and below current directory find /usr/local -name "*blast*" # finds file names *blast* in specfied directory find /usr/local -iname "*blast*" # same as above, but case insensitive find ~ -type f -mtime -2 # finds all files you have modified in the last two days which <application_name> # location of application whereis <application_name> # searches for executeables in set of directories grep pattern file # provides lines in 'file' where pattern 'appears', grep 'pattern' file | wc # pipes lines with pattern into word count wc
List directories and files
ls -al # shows something like this for each file/dir: drwxrwxrwx # d: directory # rwx: read write execute # first triplet: user permissions (u) # second triplet: group permissions (g) # third triplet: world permissions (o)
More useful commands
df # disk space free -g # memory info in Megabytes uname -a # shows tech info about machine bc # command-line calculator (to exit type 'quit') wget <ftp> # file download from web ln -s original_file new_file # creates symbolic link to file or directory du -sh # displays disk space usage of current directory du -sh * # displays disk space usage of individual files/directories du -s * | sort -nr # shows disk space used by different directories/files sorted by size Process Management
Viewing text files
more <my_file> # views text, use space bar to browse, hit 'q' to exit less <my_file> # a more versatile text viewer than 'more', 'q' exits, 'G' end of text, 'g' beginning, '/' find forward, '?' find backwards cat <my_file> # concatenates files and prints content to standard output
Running and managing processes
top # view top consumers of memory and CPU (press 1 to see per-CPU statistics) who # Shows who is logged into system w # Shows which users are logged into system and what they are doing ps # Shows processes running by user ps -e # Shows all processes on system; try also '-a' and '-x' arguments ps aux | grep <user_name> # Shows all processes of one user ps ax --tree # Shows the child-parent hierarchy of all processes ps -o %t -p <pid> # Shows how long a particular process was running. # (E.g. 6-04:30:50 means 6 days 4 hours ...) Ctrl z <enter> # Suspend (put to sleep) a process fg # Resume (wake up) a suspended process and brings it into foreground bg # Resume (wake up) a suspended process but keeps it running in the background. Ctrl c # Kills the process that is currently running in the foreground kill <process-ID> # Kills a specific process kill -9 <process-ID> # NOTICE: "kill -9" is a very violent approach. It does not give the process any time to perform cleanup procedures. kill -l # List all of the signals that can be sent to a proccess kill -s SIGSTOP <process-ID> # Suspend (put to sleep) a specific process kill -s SIGCONT <process-ID> # Resume (wake up) a specific process renice -n <priority_value> # Changes the priority value, which range from 1-19,the higher the value the lower the priority, default is 10.
Archiving
Dealing with archiving files is fundamental in bioinformatics. Most often files are zipped (compressed). If you want to put multiple files or directories into a single file, you use the program tar
. It’s important to know that tar
alone does not zip without the -z
options. Here are a few approaches:
Creating
tar -cvf my_file.tar mydir/ # Builds tar archive of files or directories. For directories, execute command in parent directory. Don't use absolute path. tar -czvf my_file.tgz mydir/ # Builds tar archive with compression of files or directories. For dirs, execute command in parent directory. zip -r mydir.zip mydir/ # Command to archive a directory (here mydir) with zip. tar -jcvf mydir.tar.bz2 mydir/ # Creates *.tar.bz2 archive
Viewing
tar -tvf my_file.tar tar -tzvf my_file.tgz
Extracting
tar -xvf my_file.tar tar -xzvf my_file.tgz gunzip my_file.tar.gz # or unzip my_file.zip, uncompress my_file.Z,or bunzip2 for file.tar.bz2 find -name '*.zip' | xargs -n 1 unzip # this command usually works for unzipping many files that were compressed under Windows tar -jxvf mydir.tar.bz2 # Extracts *.tar.bz2 archive