Command Line

Objectives

• Define what a terminal window is

• Describe how to open an instance of the terminal window

• Identify commands used for navigating directories

• Use commands to manipulate files (moving, copying, editing, removing, creating)

• Distinguish between absolute and relative paths

• Apply commands towards everyday problems and workflows

Living in the Command Line

Web programmers have to live on the command line. It gives us fast, reliable, and automatable control over computers. Web servers usually don't have graphical interfaces, so we need to interact with them through command line and programmatic interfaces. Once you become comfortable using the command line, staying on the keyboard will also help you keep an uninterrupted flow of work going without the disruption of shifting to the mouse.

Pretty cool, huh? Let's get started! But first...

Important Note: You should not copy / paste scripts from web pages and run them in your terminal until you have read them and understand what they do, bad things can happen, particularly with sudo and su commands.

Regarding scripts which you may find on the web while searching for solutions, assume they are going to do something bad.