Basic filesystem commands

Here is a list of basic commands for viewing, copying and moving the files in your directory, creating new subdirectories and navigating. Go ahead and experiment with these commands.

• ls is a command to list the files in the present working directory. You can give it options, for example ls -l will give listings with more information about the files than ls.
• pwd tells you where you are. This can be useful if you have created many subdirectories.
• cd allows you to change the current working directory. You can give it an absolute or a relative argument. cd .. would move you to the next highest subdirectory. cd /ncsu/pams046/bin would move you to the the /ncsu/pams046/bin subdirectory, etc.
• mkdir allows you to create a subdirectory. mkdir test would create the subdirectory test. rmdir test would remove it. You can only remove empty subdirectories.
• rm allows you to remove a file. It is aliased as rm -i, which means that it will ask if you really want to remove the file. rm test.log would remove the file test.log.
• mv moves a file. mv file.orig file.new would move the file file.orig to file.new. You can think of it as renaming.
• cp copies one or more files. cp file1 file2 copies the file file1 to the file file2. cp file1 file2 direct would copy the files file1 file2 to the directory direct.
• chmod is a rather complex command to change the permissions on files. You can write batch files, and use chmod to allow execution of them.
• more will display the contents of a file. Use it as more filename. While in more, typing a q will get you out. On some systems, the command less is a more feature-rich replacement for more.