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Haile Melaku
Haile Melaku

Posted on • Updated on

Shell, navigation

Hey guys am back today am going to show you something i think is very important for beginners.
well will start with shell navigation, this is very important topic when working with a Linux environment and we are going to see some basic navigation commands.


The first directory in the file system is called the root directory.The root directory contains files and sub directories, which contain more files and sub directories and so on and so on.

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Some of the commands are:


pwd

We use the pwd command to see the name of the working directory

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Tip: for more info pwd or use the linux command man pwd

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cd

We use cd to change the working directory.To do this, we type cd followed by the pathname of the desired working directory.

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Pathnames can be specified two different ways; absolute pathnames or relative pathnames.

Absolute path is defined as the specifying the location of a file or directory from the root directory(/).

  • Start at the root directory ( / ) and work down.

  • Write a slash ( / ) after every directory name (last one is optional)

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Relative path is defined as the path related to the present working directly(pwd). It starts at your current directory and never starts with a /.

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Example of Absolute and Relative Path

Suppose you are currently located in home/haile and you want to change your directory to home/haile/h. Let’s see both the absolute and relative path concepts to do this:

Changing directory with relative path concept :

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Changing directory with absolute path concept:

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Moving backward with cd

To move backward with cd command we use cd .. (cd followed by two dots).

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to move backward two levels

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If we type cd followed by nothing, cd will change the working directory to our home directory.

Tip: for more info on cd command cd or use the command *man cd *

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ls

We use ls command when we want to list the contents of a directory.

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To list the files in the /dev directory
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List the files in the working directory in long format
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List the files in the /bin directory and the /etc directory in long format
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List all files (even ones with names beginning with a period character, which are normally hidden) in the parent of the working directory in long format
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Tip: for more info ls or use the linux command man ls

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less

we use less to view text files.less is a program that lets us view text files. This is very handy since many of the files used to control and configure Linux are human readable.

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Tip: for more info less or use the command man less

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touch

we use touch to create a file without content.The file created using touch command is empty

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You can create multiple files with touch.

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Tip: for more info touch or use the command man touch

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before we get into the other commands we first need to learn about Wildcards

Wildcards
Wildcards allow you to select filenames based on patterns of characters. The table below lists the wildcards and what they select:

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Examples are:

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cp

We use cp command to copy files and directories.

Copy the file content of one file to the other
if b.txt doesn't exist it creates the b.txt file

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Copy the file a.txt to the dir folder
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Copy the content of dir to dir2 and if dir2 doesn't exist it creates it.

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Tip: for more info cp or use the command man cp

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mv

we use the mv command to moves or renames files and directories depending on how it is used.

Rename the a.txt file to load and if file load exists, its contents are silently replaced with the contents of a.txt.

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The files b.txt and c.txt are moved to directory dir. If dir does not exist, mv will exit with an error.

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Rename the directory dir to lp.If lp exists, the directory dir is moved within directory lp.

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Tip: for more info mv or use the command man mv

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rm

We use rm to remove (delete) files and directories.

To remove h.txt

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To remove multiple files ha.txt and load

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To remove a directory dir2

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Tip: for more info rm or use the command man rm

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mkdir

we use the command mkdir to create directories.

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Tip: for more info mkdir or use the command man mkdir

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rmdir

We use rmdir to remove empty directories.

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Tip: more info rmdir or use the command man rmdir

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