' by default. If I place at the start of the line,
do not try to type it into the shell. It is just to indicate a shell
command. In this document 
- or # and the
following text are comments explaining what a command does.
Jeremy Sanders
October 2011
You should first log in to your computer. If you open a new console or terminal window (the terms are often interchangeable), the computer will start a new shell. Shells in new windows should begin with your home directory as their current directory. By default files will be read from the current directory (directories are called folders in other operating systems). Each console window has its own shell, with its own current directory and settings (environment).
In this document I will try to explain how to use the shell for simple
operations. I suggest that you try out the commands below by typing
them into the shell. The shell has a prompt which means that it is
ready to accept commands to be inputted. The prompt for the tcsh shell
is `' by default. If I place at the start of the line,
do not try to type it into the shell. It is just to indicate a shell
command. In this document - or # and the
following text are comments explaining what a command does.
Unix commands are given names which are usually short words or acronyms. The first item that you type at a prompt is usually the name of the command. Many commands have parameters, which are supplied as arguments - a list of text items separated by spaces. Often arguments are filenames.
The pwd command will tell you what the current directory of the shell is
> pwd /home/userBy typing pwd you ask the shell to look for the program `pwd' on the current path (see §13) and to run it. Some commands are actually built into the shell and are not separate programs. You can see where a command or program resides by using
> which pwd /bin/pwd
The date command prints its output to the console,
> date Mon Sep 16 20:13:35 BST 2002More accurately commands write to a Unix stream called stdout, which is normally your console. They read from stdin and write error messages to stderr.
A basic command which takes arguments is echo:
> echo "hello, world" hello, worldecho just prints out its arguments to stdout, the screen. Note that we use the quote symbols around hello, world, to make it a single argument to echo (see §14). The shell interprets spaces as separating arguments, unless they are enclosed in quotes (single or double) or they are preceeded by a backslash.
We can take the output from programs and put it into a file:
> echo "Hello, world" > testfileThe `
' symbol tells the shell to redirect the stdout output
from any command into a file, which is called `testfile'. This file is
placed in the current directory by default. If `testfile' already
exists then tcsh will not overwrite the file (depending on
certain shell settings, specifically noclobber). You can force an
overwrite by using `
'.
We can add text to existing files too:
> echo "Hello again" >> testfile`
' is a shell redirection which appends, or adds to a
file. Now we have a look in the file to check that everything worked:
> more testfile Hello, world Hello againThe more command prints out a file to the screen, one screenful at a time (press space to get the next screen or q to exit). An alternative way to display a file is to use the cat command, which does not pause at the end of each page.
Unix commands such as cat and more can be combined
with a pipe (given the symbol 
), which takes the output of
the first command and passes it to the input of the second:
> cat testfile | moreThis command does the same thing as the previous more testfile. If a command takes input we can redirect input from a file into it.
> sort < testfile > testfile_sortedThe sort command sorts its input (here the contents of testfile) and sends the sorted lines to the output, which then is sent to create the file testfile_sorted.
echo is not usually used for making files. Text editors are useful programs for editing the contents of files. Start emacs, a text file editor, to modify the file:
> emacs testfile & [1] 10735 <-- this tells you emacs is running as process 10735The command emacs starts the emacs editor with the specified file(s) (or none if no arguments are specified). What is different here is that we started it in the background (with the & symbol), allowing us to carry on typing in the shell. We can bring it back to being a foreground process by typing
> fg emacs <-- this tells you emacs is in the foregroundYou can no longer type commands in that shell. However you can press Ctrl+Z in the shell to suspend the emacs process (a process is a running Unix program). That means the process still exists but is frozen in its current state. If you pressed Ctrl+Z you can then type
> bgwhich will allow the emacs process to carry on in the background again. If you suspend a program it will stop until it is told to continue using bg, fg or kill.
Let us make some modifications to the file. You can add the line `My name is blah' to the end of the file. We can save the file either by choosing `File' on the menu at the top of the window with the mouse, then selecting `Save (current buffer)', or by typing `C-x C-s' (that means hold down `Ctrl', press x and then press Ctrl and s), or clicking on the toolbar icon for saving.
Key shortcuts in emacs are very useful to learn as they speed up things up. We can exit emacs by selecting the File menu and choosing `Exit emacs', or type `C-x C-c'. Keyboard shortcuts are shown on the menus next to the description. Where it says M-something, the M means hold down the `Alt' or `Meta' key.
> ls <-- ls is the list files command anotherfile testfile > ls | more <-- displays directory contents one screen at a time anotherfile testfile > ls testfile testfile > ls testfile xx ls: xx: No such file or directory testfile > ls -l <-- show details about each of the files total 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 jss users 99 Aug 31 11:27 anotherfile -rw-r--r-- 1 jss users 25 Aug 24 22:08 testfile ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^ Permissions ln user group size mod. date filenamels shows the contents of a directory or shows you the files that exist from a list of files. -l is an option, flag or switch which modifies the behaviour of ls to print a long listing (with more detail).
Many Unix commands have options (which almost always start with a - sign), and you can often use more than one option on a command. Some commands require options to come before the filenames on a command line. Many newer versions of commands (especially those created by the GNU project) have long-options, which start with -, e.g. ls -size in Linux. There are often short and long versions of the same option.
The output from ls -l shows the permissions of the file (who can access it), the number of links (I will not explain that here), the user who owns it, the group which has access to it, the size of the file in bytes or characters, the date and time it was last modified, and its name.
We can copy a file with cp:
> cp testfile testfile2 > more testfile2 Hello, world Hello again
Delete a file with rm (remove):
> rm testfile2Note you do not get any warning when you do this! You can put
alias rm "rm -i"in your .mytcshrc settings file (see §7 below) to stop you deleting things by accident.
Rename a file with mv (move):
> cp testfile testfile2 > mv testfile2 a_great_file
Feel free to start another terminal with the xterm & command. Note that the terminal you get looks different because there are actually several different programs which act as a terminal. xterm, the original, is old. If you are using the Gnome desktop environment, use gnome-terminal instead. KDE has the konsole terminal.
Opening more than one terminal is very useful and allows you to have several programs running, or several directories open, at once. New terminal programs also let you open up several tabs inside a terminal window.
You can also scroll each terminal with shift+pageup and shift+pagedown or using the scroll bar. Terminal programs usually remember a certain number of lines of history (see the program settings to change this).
You can also copy and paste text in the terminal. Copy and paste are unfortunately a bit different on Unix compared to other platforms. The easiest way to copy simple text in Unix is to select some text with the left mouse button (click and drag right), and then paste with the middle mouse button. Try this out! You can also select `words' and filenames with a left double-click. This copy and paste operation also works in emacs.
Many modern programs also allow you to copy and paste using the menu bar or the standard ctrl+c and ctrl+v keyboard shortcuts.
Shells have a great feature called filename completion, where you do not have to type in a full filename. If you press the tab key after type a few letters, the shell will try to work out what the rest of the filename is based on what files exist. If there are several possible files, it will complete the filename until the name is ambiguous.
Pressing ctrl+d in tcsh lists the possible filenames which so far match the partial filename being completed (care - this closes a shell if there is nothing on the line).
Have a go at typing ls tes and pressing tab to see what is matched (as long as there is testfile in the current directory). The tab key also completes partial commands (try gnome-term[tab]).
The shell also remembers the most recent commands that you have typed in. You can recall them with the up and down cursor keys (repeatedly press up to get older commands). You can press enter to run the same command again or edit it with the cursor keys, delete, etc... The history command lists out the commands you have typed.
Another occasionally useful feature is to use an exclamation command to recall a command of the same type. For instance if we do:
> man tcsh <-- look at man page for tcsh > ls *.txt > !man <-- recalls man tcsh > !ls <-- recalls ls *.txtTake care doing this for dangerous commands like rm (memory often fails us!). They also don't work in scripts. You can actually do quite a bit more with !, but as I don't bother to remember how it works I won't tell you.
> ls testfile* # same as typing 'ls testfile1 testfile2' testfile1 testfile2 > ls fred* # same as typing 'ls fred freddy' fred freddy > ls *es*1 testfile1 > ls fr?d fred frid > ls fr[ei]d fred frid > ls testfile* fred* testfile1 testfile2 fred freddy* will match any number of following characters (including none), ? matches a single character (but not none), and sets of matching characters can be put between square brackets. Wildcard expressions are expanded so that the program gets a list of normal filenames. Experiment with wildcards as they are invaluable!
Important dot-files include .mytcshrc which is a script which is run every time you open a new tcsh shell. .emacs is a file which holds emacs settings. .Xdefaults contain settings for older Unix graphical programs.
> ls -a <-- list all files, including hidden files . .. .emacs .mytcshrc
In every directory there are also two hidden directories, `.' and `..'. See the next section for details.
Directories have parents - the directory that directory is contained within. They can also have children - directories within that directory. Every directory has the root directory (/) as an ancestor.
Let us start by making a directory:
> pwd <-- shows current directory /home/username > mkdir testdir <-- make a directory > cd testdir <-- change to directory > pwd /home/username/testdir > ls <-- nothing here yet > touch hello <-- makes a blank file called hello > ls hello > ls -a <-- show hidden files . .. helloVarious ways to change to this new directory are
> cd <-- takes you to /home/username > cd testdir <-- takes you to /home/username/testdiror any of these
> cd /home/username/testdir <-- absolute path > cd ~username/testdir <-- equivalent > cd ~/testdir <-- equiv. if your are usernameor
> cd /home > cd username/testdiror even
> cd / <-- go to root directory > cd home <-- now in /home dir > cd username <-- now in /home/username > cd testdir <-- now in /home/username/testdir
We can refer to a file in another directory by building up a path, a list of directories which are inside each other, and then the filename, e.g.
> cd /home/jss > more testdir/hello <-- shows hello in /home/jss/testdir > more t1/t2/hello <-- shows hello in /home/jss/t1/t2 > more /home/jss/test <-- shows test in /home/jss > cd / > more home/jss/test <-- shows test in /home/jss > cd /home > more jss/test <-- shows test in /home/jssAn absolute path is one which starts from the root directory, `/', e.g. /home/username/test.txt.
In every directory exist two other directories, the `.' directory which is an alias of that directory, and `..' which is an alias of the directory that directory is in. For example:
> cd /home/username/testdir > pwd /home/username/testdir > cd . > pwd /home/username/testdir <-- the same!! > cd .. > pwd /home/username <-- moves ``up'' one > cd testdir/.. > pwd /home/username <-- we went nowhere!`..' and `.' are useful to refer to files and directories which exist `up' the tree from the current directory, for example:
> cd /home/jss/testdir > more ../testfile <-- shows testfile in /home/jss > ls -ld . <-- shows info about curr. dir.
The cd command has a clever trick! If we type cd - we get the same directory as we were in before the previous cd.
> cd /home/user > cd testdir/fred > cd - > pwd /home/user
Life is much easier if we change the shell prompt (the symbol) to
include the name of the current directory. We could add the line
set prompt="%m:%c02> "to your .mytcshrc file (prompt is an environment variable, see §13). When you restart your shell, your prompt will show the computer you are on (%m) and the directory you are in, relative to your home directory (%c02, the 02 says the maximum number of subdirectories to show).
An alternative shell prompt is
set prompt="%m:%/> "which shows the entire path of your current directory from the root directory. Another quite good one is to put the following in your .mytcshrc file
set prompt="%m:%c02> "
if( $TERM == xterm ) then
set prompt="%{\033]0;%n@%m:%~\007%}$prompt"
endif
Which puts your current working directory on the title of your xterms
(read the manual to understand how this works).
Directories show up like this on ls -l:
drwxr-xr-x 2 jss jss 4096 Sep 15 14:46 testdirIf we do ls testdir, this shows the contents of the directory, not its name. This can be avoided with the ls -d option. The -F flag on ls uses a special '/' character after each directory to enable you to distinguish them (and scripts):
> ls -F normalfile script* testdir2/
Permissions are shown by ls -l at the front of the listing, with a format like -rwxr-r-. The first character is a d if the file is a directory. The next three characters correspond to the permissions of the owner. x means that the owner can run this as a script or program, r means that the owner can read the file, and w means that the owner can write to the file. The following three characters are the permissions of members of the group. In the example above, the group can read the file, but not write nor run it. The next three characters are the permissions of other people, here they can read the file.
If you are the owner of the file or directory you can modify the permissions to disallow or allow access to the file by other people (see man chmod for more detail):
chmod o-r file # ``others'' cannot read the file chmod g-r file # ``group'' cannot read the file chmod og-r file # group and others cannot read file chmod og+r file # group and others can read file chmod uog+x file # everyone can run the file as a program chmod -w file # write protect file to help prevent overwrite
> pwd /home/username > echo 'hi there' > out.txt <-- make out.txt > more out.txt hi there > ln -s out.txt wibble <-- make a link wibble to out.txt > more wibble <-- wibble 'points to' out.txt hi there > echo 'more text' >> out.txt <-- add to out.txt > more wibble hi there more text > rm wibble <-- delete the link > more out.txt <-- original still exists hi there more textWe can make a link to directories even, and files in other directories. This can make a convenient shortcut. e.g.
> cd <-- goes to home directory > ln -s /data/fred/testdir testdir > cd testdir <-- goes to /data/fred/testdir > cd ~/testdir <-- goes to /data/fred/testdir
> cat `ls -rt | tail -1`prints out the last modified file to the screen (the ls command lists the files in reverse date order, and tail selects the last line).
/.mytcshrc
file to get them the next time you start a shell. The format for an
alias definition in tcsh is alias new "old". For example
alias rm "rm -i" <-- ask for confirmationMakes every rm command you type in become rm -i. Only commands, not files are aliased. For instance rm rubbish* becomes rm -i rubbish*. This can get quite confusing if used too often or inappropriately (don't try alias ls as 'rm'). You can also do things like
alias lsl "ls -lrt"which makes lsl show your files in long time order, latest last.
Variables are used within scripts and they can also affect the behaviour of the shell (e.g. the shell prompt is stored in the prompt variable). Environment variables are passed to programs run from the shell -- they can be useful for sending information to a program. Special environment variables can affect standard Unix behaviour (e.g. PATH).
In the tcsh shell you can list the variables using the set command without any arguments:
> set <-- list all variables
...
uid 914
user jss
version tcsh 6.17.00 (Astron) 2009-07-10 (x86_64-u...
> set name=fred <-- set variable name to fred
> echo $name <-- print out contents of name variable
> echo ${name}_foo <-- prints fred_foo
The $name or ${name} syntax is called expansion
of a variable. The shell replaces it with the contents of the variable
before running the command.
Environment variables are used similarly. They are typically given upper-case names which helps to distinguish them from variables.
> setenv <-- list all environment variables ... > setenv VAR something <-- set an environment variable > echo $VAR <-- use an environment variable
Special environment variables include PATH which is a list of directories to search for commands in, separated by colons. For instance you can add a directory to the list using
> setenv PATH /home/username/bin:${PATH}
which makes /home/username/bin searched before all the other
directories on the PATH. Another environment variable you may meet is
LD_LIBRARY_PATH which tells the system where to look for
shared libraries when running programs.
> echo ; echo <-- semicolon separates commands > echo \; echo <-- semicolon is quoted ; echo
Another way to quote special characters is to use single or double quotes around them. The difference between double and single quotes is that environment variables are not expanded inside single quotes.
> echo "Hello $name" Hello fred > echo 'Hello $name' Hello $name
This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 2008 (1.71)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,
Nikos Drakos,
Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999,
Ross Moore,
Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney.
The command line arguments were:
latex2html -split 0 -font_size 10pt -no_navigation unix_shell.tex
The translation was initiated by Jeremy Sanders on 2011-10-02