Intro to the CLI Lab Exercise

Episode X: A New Terminal

A long time ago, in a Unix environment far, far away… young Jedi Padawans who knew only of desktop software were seduced by the dark side of the Force to enter:

The Terminal

Part I: mkdir and touch - set the scene

The mkdir and touch commands are foundational for managing files and directories. mkdir stands for make directory. mkdir allows you to create new directories in your file system. On the other hand, touch is used for creating new files.

Both commands provide a quick and straightforward way to set up your project’s structure.

Practice:

  1. At the start of this lab, you should already be in a directory called star-wars.

  2. Create a new directory here called death-star.

  3. Create the following files inside of it: darth-vader.txt, princess-leia.txt, and storm-trooper.txt.

  4. Make another directory in star-wars called galaxy-far-far-away.

  5. Inside the galaxy-far-far-away directory, make a new directory named tatooine and create the following files inside it: luke.txt and ben-kenobi.txt.

  6. Inside the tatooine directory, make a directory called millenium-falcon, and inside it, create han-solo.txt and chewbacca.txt files.

Part II: cp - copy

The cp command is used for copying files and directories. Short for copy, this command lets you duplicate files from one location to another.

For example, cp source.txt destination.txt would copy the contents of source.txt into a new file called destination.txt. It’s a versatile tool often used in scripts and batch operations. While cp is powerful and efficient, it’s crucial to use it carefully to avoid accidental overwrites of the destination file.

💡 Check the manual: Run man cp to see the options — hit the Q key to get out of the manual page viewer.

Practice:

  1. Copy storm-trooper.txt from the death-star directory to the tatooine directory.

Part III: mv - move

The mv command is your go-to tool for moving and renaming files and directories. Short for move, this command allows you to take a file from one location and place it into another. But it’s more versatile than that; you’ll see why soon.

You could use mv myfile.txt /new/directory/ to move a file from one directory to another.

💡 Check the manual: Run man mv to see the options —hit the Q key to get out of the manual page viewer.

Practice:

  1. Move luke.txt and ben-kenobi.txt to the millenium-falcon directory.

  2. Move the millenium-falcon directory out of the tatooine directory and into the galaxy-far-far-away directory.

  3. Move the millenium-falcon directory into the death-star directory.

  4. Move princess-leia.txt into the millenium-falcon directory.

Part IV: mv - rename

You can also use mv to rename files. This is accomplished by moving the file from one name to another within the same directory.

Using the command mv oldfile.txt newfile.txt will rename oldfile.txt to newfile.txt.

Practice:

  1. Rename ben-kenobi.txt to obi-wan.txt.

Part V: rm - remove

The rm command stands for remove and deletes files and directories. To delete a file, you’d type rm filename. To delete a directory and all the files inside of it, you’d use rm -r directoryname.

While the rm command is efficient for cleaning up, it comes with a caution: deleted items don’t go to a recycle bin— they’re permanently removed. So before executing this command, make sure you want to delete the target permanently.

Practice:

  1. Delete obi-wan.txt.

Part VI: All together

The mkdir, touch, cp, mv, and rm commands are essential tools for file and directory management in the command line.

Let’s try these all together!

Practice:

  1. In the galaxy-far-far-away directory, make a directory called yavin-4.

  2. Move the millenium-falcon directory out of the death-star directory and into the yavin-4 directory.

  3. Make a directory in the yavin-4 directory called x-wing.

  4. Move princess-leia.txt to the yavin-4 directory and luke.txt to the x-wing directory.

  5. Move the millenium-falcon directory and the x-wing directory out of the yavin-4 directory and into the galaxy-far-far-away directory.

  6. In the death-star directory, create directories for tie-fighter-1, tie-fighter-2, and tie-fighter-3.

  7. Move darth-vader.txt into the tie-fighter-1 directory.

  8. Make a copy of storm-trooper.txt into both the tie-fighter-2 and tie-fighter-3 directories.

  9. Move all of the tie-fighters directories out of the death-star directory and into galaxy-far-far-away directory.

Part VII: rm -r: Remove directories and everything they contain

Remember, this command will not ask you if you really want to delete the directory and its files. It will just delete.

Once you hit Enter, its gone forever.

Always make sure you are deleting the right thing, or you could accidentally delete things you don’t intend to delete.

Practice:

  1. Remove the tie-fighter-2 and tie-fighter-3 directories.

Part VIII: May the Force be with you

Let’s wrap up this story properly.

Practice:

  1. Touch a file in the x-wing directory called the-force.txt.

  2. Destroy the death-star directory and anyone inside of it.

  3. Return the x-wing and millenium-falcon directory to the yavin-4 directory.

Part IX: Clean up

  1. Navigate to your ~/code/ga/labs directory:

    cd ~/code/ga/labs

  2. Remove the star-wars directory and all its contents.

Like it never happened!