learning how to use the terminal of your computer is a console without any buttons. you are expected almost to know which“buttons” are hidden there below the surface. no one ever gave me a primer and it was painful to learn over time through trial and error what those hidden commands are. here’s a compilation of some useful commands to get you through most basic functions and some more interesting ones.
btw, god help you if you need to write shell scripts. ugh, i think they’re the worst syntactically. my tendency is to write node or python scripts instead because at least they make bore sense to me.
absolute basics
cd [name] — change directory
~ is shorthand for your home directory
.. is shorthand for the parent directory
. is shorthand for the current directory
- is shorthand for the previous directory you were in(like your browser’s“back” button)
e.g. cd .. will take you to the parent directory
ls — list contents of the directory you’re in
ls -lah is useful to list hidden files as well
rm [file] — remove a file
rm -r [file] — remove a directory
mv [origin] [destination] — move a file somewhere else
clear — also, clears screen
vim [file] — edit a file
i to go to insert mode
esc to go back to command-mode
/ to search in the file
:w(in command mode) to save
:q(in command mode) to quit
shortcuts
this is a pet peeve of mine that no one ever taught me these super handy shortcuts and i didn’t know about them for many years.
[ctrl] + a — go to beginning of the line
[ctrl] + e — go to the end of the line
[ctrl] + c — kill the currently running program
[ctrl] + k — clear screen
[ctrl] + z — pause the currently running program
tl;dr
absolute basics
shortcuts
intermediate