Editing Scanco Administration (section)

====Twelve Essential Commands====

These are the commands which you have to know in order to be basically functional with a shell (command line).

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|width="80pt"| <tt>ls</tt>
| List directory contents.

<tt>ls -l</tt> long listing with dates and permissions

<tt>ls -a</tt> list all, including hidden files (hidden files start with a period)

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| <tt>cd</tt>
| Change directory.

<tt>cd -</tt> change to previous directory

<tt>cd ~</tt> change to home directory

<tt>cd ..</tt> change to parent directory

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| <tt>pwd</tt>	
| Print current (working) directory.
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| <tt>cp</tt>
| Copy file(s).

<tt>cp -r somedir somedest</tt> Copy recursively (directory and all contents)

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| <tt>mv</tt>
| Move (or rename) a file (or directory)
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| <tt>rm</tt>
| Delete (remove) a file.

<tt>rm -r somedir</tt> Delete recursively (directory and all contents)

<tt>rm -ri somedir</tt> Delete recursively, but prompt before each removal

<tt>rm -rf somedir</tt> Delete recursively, never prompt

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| <tt>mkdir</tt>
| Create directory.
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| <tt>rmdir</tt>
| Remove (empty) directory.
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| <tt>cat</tt>
| Print file contents (to console).
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| <tt>less</tt>
| Scroll through file contents, one page at a time. SPACEBAR to advance a page, B to go back a page, Q to quit, /pattern to search for pattern
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| <tt>man</tt>
| Get help on <tt>command</tt>. (eg. <tt>man ls</tt> for help on <tt>ls</tt>).  You move around in man as you do with less: SPACEBAR is forward a page, and so on.
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| <tt>exit</tt>
| Close shell (i.e. the terminal). If this is your login shell, you will log out.
|}


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