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Introduction to the command line

We'll be using a few new words to reference the command line such as shell, bash and terminal through out the course. They all pretty much mean the same thing but with some small, and not so important, differences between them. Essentially a command line is a textual interface for humans to operate a computer. What is very important to understand is that textual commands and graphical actions operate on the same computer. For example, if you create a file via the command line, it will show up in you file explorer and vice versa. The graphical and textual interfaces are just different representations of the same machine.

Now open up a terminal and you'll see the following.

waldek@hellodebian:~$

This is what we call a prompt. It's not much but it's our window into the computer. As with most things in life you can question it's who, where, what and when. This information is actually embedded in the prompt. Let's break it down.

waldek is who I am on this computer
hellodebian is the what, as in what computer I'm operating on
~ is where I am located on this computer

What about the when then? Let's type in date and see what happens.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ date
Fri 18 Feb 2022 03:46:59 PM CET
waldek@hellodebian:~$

There we see our when! But this miniscule operation illustrates us the fundamental operation of a command line!

we have a prompt where we can run a program
the program runs and outputs it's information on the terminal
once the program finishes we can run an other program

I'm deliberately saying program here but is date really a program? It's a bit basic no? Well, it is a program and most commands you'll type into your terminal are actually programs. We can illustrate this as follows.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ vlc
VLC media player 3.0.16 Vetinari (revision 3.0.13-8-g41878ff4f2)
[0000559c46ee95b0] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[0000559c46f89790] main playlist: playlist is empty

Vlc is now running and the terminal is blocked meaning we can't run other programs or commands in it. If you try to run the date command again, or ls or htop, it won't work! Try it out if you don't believe me. But what happens if you close vlc? The commands you typed get executed! This is an illustration of the sequential nature of a command line.

Now, I don't think we have sufficiently proven that date is a full blown program so let's dig a bit deeper.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ which vlc
/usr/bin/vlc
waldek@hellodebian:~$ which date
/usr/bin/date
waldek@hellodebian:~$ which which
/usr/bin/which

There is quite bit to unpack in the example above. First, what on earth is which? Well, it's also a program and it's sole purpose in life is to tell you where a program is located on your system. Because which by itself does not make a lot of sense it needs what we call an argument. Here the argument is the name of the program we want to know it's location of. The existence of arguments is the second big thing we discovered here. The third new thing we can observe here is what we call paths, meaning locations on the system. For example, vlc is a binary program located in a folder called bin which is located in a folder called usr which is at the root of your system. If this sounds complicated, don't worry, we'll go into detail a bit later.

Now that we know where some of our programs are located, let's find out what they are. The methodology is the same as with which but we'll use an other program called file who's purpose in life is to tell more about the content of a certain file. Logically, file needs an argument and this argument is the path to the file you want to inspect.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ file /usr/bin/vlc
/usr/bin/vlc: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=51c40f8234213415771b3a344cab25a140543f8a, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
waldek@hellodebian:~$ file /usr/bin/date
/usr/bin/date: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=b740f054aaef6a85aff024858c914c7eae70a6a5, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
waldek@hellodebian:~$ file /usr/bin/which
/usr/bin/which: POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable
waldek@hellodebian:~$ file $(which which) # this is some command line kung fu...
/usr/bin/which: POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Here we learn that both vlc and date are executables, compiled for an x86-64 system. I would say they are both created equally no? Both are actual programs. But what about which? It's also an executable but not compiled, it's a POSIX shell script. So not all programs are created equally?

Compiled vs interpreted

Executing a file, or program, means you take this file and tell the computer it needs to execute the actions that are stored in the file. Compiled programs contain actual instructions the computer understands out of the box. This means that programs that are compiled are always compiled for a specify architecture which in our case is x86-64. On a Raspberry Pi this would be armhf or arm64.

Interpreted programs are not compiled to machine code but when we run them each line is passed to an appropriate interpreter and executed line by line. The first line of a script is often the path to the interpreter that understands the code that will follow. Popular interpreted languages are bash, sh, python, php, ...

We can take it one more step forward and peak into the content of the files. A nice little program to do this is called head who's purpose in life is to show the first few lines of a file. First for vlc.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ head /usr/bin/vlc
ELF>@<40>1@8
   HHh,h<h<<3C><><EFBFBD>,<2C><<3C>< <20><><EFBFBD>DDP<44>td###<23><>Q<EFBFBD>tdR<64>tdh,h<h<<3C><>/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2GNUQ<EFBFBD><EFBFBD>4!4w4L<34>%<25>@T?<3F>GNU)<29>)*<2A>e<EFBFBD>m9<6D>y<EFBFBD><79><EFBFBD><EFBFBD> <20><>)F <20>, X<>`
Pco<63><6F><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>v<EFBFBD><76>ZD<5A>
             <20><>/<2F><><EFBFBD>h<EFBFBD>"<22> _ITM_deregisterTMCloneTable__gmon_start___ITM_registerTMCloneTablelibvlc_set_app_idlibvlc_newlibvlc_set_user_agentlibvlc_get_changesetlibvlc_get_versionlibvlc_set_exit_handlerlibvlc_add_intflibvlc_playlist_playlibvlc_releasesigwaitflockfilepthread_killpthread_sigmaskpthread_mutex_lockpthread_mutex_unlockfunlockfilesigactiondlsymdlerrorfflushsignal__stack_chk_failabortisattysigemptysetrand_r__fprintf_chksigaddsetmemcpystderrsigdelsetalarmfwritegeteuid__vfprintf_chk__cxa_finalizepthread_self__libc_start_main__register_atforklibvlc.so.5libpthread.so.0libdl.so.2libc.so.6GLIBC_2<EFBFBD>ri5GLIB<EFBFBD>ti.14GL<EFBFBD>u<EFBFBD>i2.4Glh<EFBFBD>p<EFBFBD>@<40>?<3F>?GLIBC_2.3.G u<>i	lW u<>i	lb<6C><62>xii
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If you need to use real-time priorities and/or privileged TCP ports
you can use %s-wrapper (make sure it is Set-UID root and

And now of which.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ head /usr/bin/which
#! /bin/sh
set -ef

if test -n "$KSH_VERSION"; then
	puts() {
		print -r -- "$*"
	}
else
	puts() {
		printf '%s\n' "$*"
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Notice how the vlc file is mostly not human readable but we can still make out some keywords? The which file however is perfectly readable! The first line of the which file is #! /bin/sh which is the path to the interpreter. The #! is called a shebang. We can dig into this to learn more about this mysterious sh.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ file /bin/sh
/bin/sh: symbolic link to dash
waldek@hellodebian:~$ which dash
/usr/bin/dash
waldek@hellodebian:~$ file /usr/bin/dash
/usr/bin/dash: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=cb6911fd56559717336c938bef1ce479b0a85b35, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Surprise surprise! The interpreter is a compiled program! When you think about it it does make sense because at the end of the day the computer only understands machine instructions. So when you execute a script each line of code is converted to machine instructions on the spot. This makes scripts easier to write but slower at execution. The above is a generalization so take it with a grain of salt please!

Note on file extensions

Linux does not rely as much on file extensions as windows does. We could even say it often does not care about them. Due to the decentralized nature of Linux development, some programs do care about them while others don't. It's a bit of hit and miss but I advise you to read this post on AskUbuntu for a more detailed explanation.

More about paths

The prompt in our terminal tells us who we are, on which machine, and where we are located. This where is symbolized with the ~ character. But where is this where?

waldek@hellodebian:~$ pwd
/home/waldek
waldek@hellodebian:~$

The pwd program prints our working directory, meaning where we are located on our system. A user's home directory is symbolized with this tilde character. We can move around our system with the cd command which is an abbreviation of change directory. cd by itself seems to to nothing but this is not the case. It's a shortcut to go to your user's home directory. Let's try this out.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd
waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd /usr/bin
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$ cd
waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd -
/usr/bin
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$ cd
waldek@hellodebian:~$

The first line appears to do nothing because we are already in our home directory. Next we move to the directory which contains the programs we discovered before and we see our prompt change. It now shows where we are located! The next line takes us back to our home and from there we can move back to where we were before with the cd - command. This last command is also a handy shortcut!

Moving around is nice but once we arrive at our destination it would be practical to be able to list the files in that directory no? This can be done with the ls program. For example.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd /usr/bin/
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$ ls
'['                                   getconf                            nmtui-hostname                 systemd-escape
 7z                                   getent                             nohup                          systemd-hwdb
 7za                                  getfacl                            notify-send                    systemd-id128
 7zr                                  getkeycodes                        nproc                          systemd-inhibit
 aa-enabled                           getopt                             nroff                          systemd-machine-id-setup
 aa-exec                              gettext                            nsenter                        systemd-mount
 aconnect                             gettext.sh                         nslookup                       systemd-notify
 add-apt-repository                   gio                                nstat                          systemd-path
 addpart                              gio-querymodules                   nsupdate                       systemd-resolve
 addr2line                            gjs                                ntfs-3g                        systemd-run
 alsabat                              gjs-console                        ntfs-3g.probe                  systemd-socket-activate
 alsaloop                             gkbd-keyboard-display              ntfscat                        systemd-stdio-bridge
 alsamixer                            glib-compile-schemas               ntfscluster                    systemd-sysusers
 alsatplg                             gmake                              ntfscmp                        systemd-tmpfiles
 alsaucm                              gnome-calculator                   ntfsdecrypt                    systemd-tty-ask-password-agent

# ------------------------------------
# --- cropped the list for clarity ---
# ------------------------------------

 gdk-pixbuf-csource                   nisdomainname                      system-config-printer-applet   zforce
 gdk-pixbuf-pixdata                   nl                                 systemctl                      zgrep
 gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer               nm                                 systemd                        zipdetails
 gdm-control                          nm-applet                          systemd-analyze                zipgrep
 gdmflexiserver                       nmcli                              systemd-ask-password           zipinfo
 gdm-screenshot                       nm-connection-editor               systemd-cat                    zless
 gedit                                nm-online                          systemd-cgls                   zmore
 gencat                               nmtui                              systemd-cgtop                  znew
 geqn                                 nmtui-connect                      systemd-delta
 GET                                  nmtui-edit                         systemd-detect-virt
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$

That's a lot of programs! Can you find cd in there? Spoiler alert, you wont... Maybe it's located somewhere else? Let's have a look.

waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$ which cd
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$

cd is not a program but a builtin command. From a practical point of view there is no difference but I do like to mention it for completeness. Later down the line it will help you to contextualize the differences between shells a bit better. But built into what? Below you can see a snippet of a part of the bash-builtin manual. For now just accept the specific shell we're using is called bash.

BASH-BUILTINS(7)                                          Miscellaneous Information Manual                                         BASH-BUILTINS(7)

NAME
       bash-builtins - bash built-in commands, see bash(1)

SYNOPSIS
       bash  defines the following built-in commands: :, ., [, alias, bg, bind, break, builtin, case, cd, command, compgen, complete, continue, de‐
       clare, dirs, disown, echo, enable, eval, exec, exit, export, fc, fg, getopts, hash, help, history, if, jobs, kill, let, local, logout, popd,
       printf,  pushd,  pwd,  read, readonly, return, set, shift, shopt, source, suspend, test, times, trap, type, typeset, ulimit, umask, unalias,
       unset, until, wait, while.

Absolute and relative paths

All roads lead to Rome.

There are multiple ways to go to the same location on your system. You can always go either in an absolute way, or in multiple relative ways. The root of your system is / and to list what we can find there we can use ls.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd /
waldek@hellodebian:/$ ls
bin   dev  home        initrd.img.old  lib32  libx32      media  opt   root  sbin  sys  usr  vmlinuz
boot  etc  initrd.img  lib             lib64  lost+found  mnt    proc  run   srv   tmp  var  vmlinuz.old
waldek@hellodebian:/$

From here we can go back home in multiple ways.

waldek@hellodebian:/$ cd
waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd -
/
waldek@hellodebian:/$ cd home/waldek/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd -
/
waldek@hellodebian:/$ cd /home/waldek/
waldek@hellodebian:~$

The first one is the handy shortcut we learned, and we go back to the root of our system with the cd - shortcut. The following two manipulations look very similar but there is a subtle difference. The first one home/waldek is a relative path, and the second one /home/waldek is an absolute one. Relative paths depend on where you are located, absolute ones always point to the same location. An example.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd /usr/bin/
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$ cd /home/waldek/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ cd -
/usr/bin
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$ cd home/waldek
-bash: cd: home/waldek: No such file or directory
waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$

The second command fails because from where I'm standing, there is no folder called home/waldek! I can however still go to my home in a relative way but I need to go back a few directories first.

waldek@hellodebian:/usr/bin$ cd ../../home/waldek/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ pwd
/home/waldek
waldek@hellodebian:~$

The .. means go back one directory so in our example we go back two directories, which brings us to the / of our system and from there we go up to home and then waldek.

`root` and `/` and `/root` are not the same thing

The word root has multiple meanings and can be a bit confusing at the start. Every Linux machine will have a root user and a / of the system. The root user is an account essential to the proper working of a Linux system, whereas / is a location, the root of the filesystem. The /root is also a location but is the home of the user root, located at the / of the filesystem. If this sounds confusing read the above paragraph slowly until you see the differences. I do want to note that the name of the user root can change but it's ID will always be 0. We'll go into detail about users and ID's later down the line.

Exercise

Explore your system a bit using cd and ls. You'll probably encounter some weird messages along the way. Keep note of them so we can discuss it together.

A pit stop to review what we've learned so far

Below is a list of programs and command we've seen so far. We've seen that some take arguments, some don't. This list will grow as we go so I advise you to take some notes of your own.

command	description
systemctl	manipulate running services
apt	the Debian package manager
htop	a command line task manager we installed
vlc	a video player we installed
date	display the time of day
which	show the path to an executable
file	print more information about a file's content
head	show the first lines of a file
pwd	print working directory
cd	change directory
ls	list content of a directory

Arguments and flags

The ls program is one of the most used commands. It's like a very basic file explorer in a graphical environment and just like it's graphical counter part you can use it to display it's data in different ways. Think of the details versus thumbnail views in your favorite explorer. But how do you do this? We can add flags or options to the program to modify it's behavior. Have a look at the output below.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls -l
total 32
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Downloads
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Music
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Public
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Templates
drwxr-xr-x 2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Videos
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls -a
.              .bashrc  Desktop    .gnupg    .profile         Templates                         .vboxclient-seamless.pid
..             .cache   .dmrc      .local    Public           .vboxclient-clipboard.pid         Videos
.bash_history  .config  Documents  Music     .python_history  .vboxclient-display-svga-x11.pid  .Xauthority
.bash_logout   .dbus    Downloads  Pictures  .ssh             .vboxclient-draganddrop.pid       .xsession-errors

The -l and -a additions are what we call flags or options. Aren't they just extra arguments? There is no real rule to the naming of this concept but this is a rather interesting take.

We can combine arguments if we want, and some programs even allow concatenation of arguments. Have a look below to understand what I mean by that.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls -a -l
total 112
drwxr-xr-x 16 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 21 18:12 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root   root   4096 Feb 18 12:49 ..
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek 2772 Feb 22 10:45 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek  220 Feb 18 12:49 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek 3526 Feb 18 12:49 .bashrc
drwx------ 16 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 14:24 .cache
drwx------ 20 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 14:23 .config
drwx------  3 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:52 .dbus
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Desktop
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek   35 Feb 18 13:33 .dmrc
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Documents
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Downloads
drwx------  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 15:07 .gnupg
drwxr-xr-x  3 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 .local
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Music
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Pictures
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek  807 Feb 18 12:49 .profile
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Public
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek   11 Feb 21 18:12 .python_history
drwx------  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 21 12:45 .ssh
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Templates
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-clipboard.pid
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-display-svga-x11.pid
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-draganddrop.pid
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-seamless.pid
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Videos
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek   56 Feb 18 13:33 .Xauthority
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek 2701 Feb 18 13:33 .xsession-errors
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls -la
total 112
drwxr-xr-x 16 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 21 18:12 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root   root   4096 Feb 18 12:49 ..
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek 2772 Feb 22 10:45 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek  220 Feb 18 12:49 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek 3526 Feb 18 12:49 .bashrc
drwx------ 16 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 14:24 .cache
drwx------ 20 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 14:23 .config
drwx------  3 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:52 .dbus
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Desktop
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek   35 Feb 18 13:33 .dmrc
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Documents
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Downloads
drwx------  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 15:07 .gnupg
drwxr-xr-x  3 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 .local
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Music
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Pictures
-rw-r--r--  1 waldek waldek  807 Feb 18 12:49 .profile
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Public
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek   11 Feb 21 18:12 .python_history
drwx------  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 21 12:45 .ssh
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Templates
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-clipboard.pid
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-display-svga-x11.pid
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-draganddrop.pid
-rw-r-----  1 waldek waldek    5 Feb 18 15:06 .vboxclient-seamless.pid
drwxr-xr-x  2 waldek waldek 4096 Feb 18 12:50 Videos
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek   56 Feb 18 13:33 .Xauthority
-rw-------  1 waldek waldek 2701 Feb 18 13:33 .xsession-errors
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Getting help

Options

OK, so we have a lot of programs we can use on the command line, plus we can change how they work by adding obscure characters. How on earth can we discover what a program can and can't do? Introducing the most important flag: --help.

Most programs come with builtin help to explain you how to use the program. Often, but not always, this help can be displayed on the terminal by adding the --help flag. Let's investigate this.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls --help
Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
  -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
  -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
      --author               with -l, print the author of each file
  -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
      --block-size=SIZE      with -l, scale sizes by SIZE when printing them;
                               e.g., '--block-size=M'; see SIZE format below
  -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
  -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                               modification of file status information);
                               with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
  -C                         list entries by columns
      --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                               if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
  -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
  -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
  -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
  -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
      --file-type            likewise, except do not append '*'
      --format=WORD          across -x, commas -m, horizontal -x, long -l,
                               single-column -1, verbose -l, vertical -C
      --full-time            like -l --time-style=full-iso
  -g                         like -l, but do not list owner
      --group-directories-first
                             group directories before files;
                               can be augmented with a --sort option, but any
                               use of --sort=none (-U) disables grouping
  -G, --no-group             in a long listing, don't print group names
  -h, --human-readable       with -l and -s, print sizes like 1K 234M 2G etc.
      --si                   likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024
  -H, --dereference-command-line
                             follow symbolic links listed on the command line
      --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir
                             follow each command line symbolic link
                               that points to a directory
      --hide=PATTERN         do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN
                               (overridden by -a or -A)
      --hyperlink[=WHEN]     hyperlink file names; WHEN can be 'always'
                               (default if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'
      --indicator-style=WORD  append indicator with style WORD to entry names:
                               none (default), slash (-p),
                               file-type (--file-type), classify (-F)
  -i, --inode                print the index number of each file
  -I, --ignore=PATTERN       do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN
  -k, --kibibytes            default to 1024-byte blocks for disk usage;
                               used only with -s and per directory totals
  -l                         use a long listing format
  -L, --dereference          when showing file information for a symbolic
                               link, show information for the file the link
                               references rather than for the link itself
  -m                         fill width with a comma separated list of entries
  -n, --numeric-uid-gid      like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs
  -N, --literal              print entry names without quoting
  -o                         like -l, but do not list group information
  -p, --indicator-style=slash
                             append / indicator to directories
  -q, --hide-control-chars   print ? instead of nongraphic characters
      --show-control-chars   show nongraphic characters as-is (the default,
                               unless program is 'ls' and output is a terminal)
  -Q, --quote-name           enclose entry names in double quotes
      --quoting-style=WORD   use quoting style WORD for entry names:
                               literal, locale, shell, shell-always,
                               shell-escape, shell-escape-always, c, escape
                               (overrides QUOTING_STYLE environment variable)
  -r, --reverse              reverse order while sorting
  -R, --recursive            list subdirectories recursively
  -s, --size                 print the allocated size of each file, in blocks
  -S                         sort by file size, largest first
      --sort=WORD            sort by WORD instead of name: none (-U), size (-S),
                               time (-t), version (-v), extension (-X)
      --time=WORD            change the default of using modification times;
                               access time (-u): atime, access, use;
                               change time (-c): ctime, status;
                               birth time: birth, creation;
                             with -l, WORD determines which time to show;
                             with --sort=time, sort by WORD (newest first)
      --time-style=TIME_STYLE  time/date format with -l; see TIME_STYLE below
  -t                         sort by time, newest first; see --time
  -T, --tabsize=COLS         assume tab stops at each COLS instead of 8
  -u                         with -lt: sort by, and show, access time;
                               with -l: show access time and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by access time, newest first
  -U                         do not sort; list entries in directory order
  -v                         natural sort of (version) numbers within text
  -w, --width=COLS           set output width to COLS.  0 means no limit
  -x                         list entries by lines instead of by columns
  -X                         sort alphabetically by entry extension
  -Z, --context              print any security context of each file
  -1                         list one file per line.  Avoid '\n' with -q or -b
      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit

The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is 10*1024).
Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,... (powers of 1000).
Binary prefixes can be used, too: KiB=K, MiB=M, and so on.

The TIME_STYLE argument can be full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, or +FORMAT.
FORMAT is interpreted like in date(1).  If FORMAT is FORMAT1<newline>FORMAT2,
then FORMAT1 applies to non-recent files and FORMAT2 to recent files.
TIME_STYLE prefixed with 'posix-' takes effect only outside the POSIX locale.
Also the TIME_STYLE environment variable sets the default style to use.

Using color to distinguish file types is disabled both by default and
with --color=never.  With --color=auto, ls emits color codes only when
standard output is connected to a terminal.  The LS_COLORS environment
variable can change the settings.  Use the dircolors command to set it.

Exit status:
 0  if OK,
 1  if minor problems (e.g., cannot access subdirectory),
 2  if serious trouble (e.g., cannot access command-line argument).

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ls>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) ls invocation'
waldek@hellodebian:~$

The output above teaches us that the options -la change the output so it becomes:

-a, --all do not ignore entries starting with .
-l use a long listing format

To not ignore entries starting with . we can use two different flags, -a or --all. The former is called short arguments and the latter long ones. The long ones are more verbose so it's often easier to understand what a line does just by reading it. Note that ls only has one way of showing the help by adding --help whereas the help for htop can be shown with both -h or --help. This inconsistency is sadly a byproduct of the decentralized nature of Linux. To add to this mess some programs use single dash long form (-help) but those programs are rather rare.

Manuals

The --help flag is tremendously useful as it gives you an overview of how you can modify a programs behaviour, kind of like settings, but it doesn't always explain you what a program is for. The is where the manuals come into play. I see the --help flag as a cheat sheet to quickly discover options and the man pages as a reference. We can read the manual by calling the man program with an argument. This argument is the name of the program you want to read the manual for. Same idea as with which.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ man ls

You're now in a program called less, which is a pager. You can scroll the manual with the arrows of vi based navigation (which we'll get into later). If you hit h you'll see the builtin documentation of less and press q to quit (twice if you're in the help section). This brings you back to your prompt. It's worth reading the wikipedia entry of the man command to understand it's history and operation.

The output below illustrates the tree of a terminal that's reading a manual. In a bash shell you invoke man ls which in turn runs the pager program to display the content. If you're intrigued by this pstree program go and read the manual!

waldek@hellodebian:~$ pstree 10845 -a
bash
  └─man ls
      └─pager
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Not every command has a manual. For example, cd does not have one. This is kind of logical because cd is a builtin. To learn more about builtin commands you can use the help program. On it's own it gives you all the builtin command you can invoke and with an argument it outputs the help about that specific command.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ help
GNU bash, version 5.1.4(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
These shell commands are defined internally.  Type `help' to see this list.
Type `help name' to find out more about the function `name'.
Use `info bash' to find out more about the shell in general.
Use `man -k' or `info' to find out more about commands not in this list.

A star (*) next to a name means that the command is disabled.

 job_spec [&]                                                               history [-c] [-d offset] [n] or history -anrw [filename] or history -ps>
 (( expression ))                                                           if COMMANDS; then COMMANDS; [ elif COMMANDS; then COMMANDS; ]... [ else>
 . filename [arguments]                                                     jobs [-lnprs] [jobspec ...] or jobs -x command [args]
 :                                                                          kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] pid | jobspec ... or kill -l [>
 [ arg... ]                                                                 let arg [arg ...]
 [[ expression ]]                                                           local [option] name[=value] ...
 alias [-p] [name[=value] ... ]                                             logout [n]
 bg [job_spec ...]                                                          mapfile [-d delim] [-n count] [-O origin] [-s count] [-t] [-u fd] [-C c>
 bind [-lpsvPSVX] [-m keymap] [-f filename] [-q name] [-u name] [-r keyse>  popd [-n] [+N | -N]
 break [n]                                                                  printf [-v var] format [arguments]
 builtin [shell-builtin [arg ...]]                                          pushd [-n] [+N | -N | dir]
 caller [expr]                                                              pwd [-LP]
 case WORD in [PATTERN [| PATTERN]...) COMMANDS ;;]... esac                 read [-ers] [-a array] [-d delim] [-i text] [-n nchars] [-N nchars] [-p>
 cd [-L|[-P [-e]] [-@]] [dir]                                               readarray [-d delim] [-n count] [-O origin] [-s count] [-t] [-u fd] [-C>
 command [-pVv] command [arg ...]                                           readonly [-aAf] [name[=value] ...] or readonly -p
 compgen [-abcdefgjksuv] [-o option] [-A action] [-G globpat] [-W wordlis>  return [n]
 complete [-abcdefgjksuv] [-pr] [-DEI] [-o option] [-A action] [-G globpa>  select NAME [in WORDS ... ;] do COMMANDS; done
 compopt [-o|+o option] [-DEI] [name ...]                                   set [-abefhkmnptuvxBCHP] [-o option-name] [--] [arg ...]
 continue [n]                                                               shift [n]
 coproc [NAME] command [redirections]                                       shopt [-pqsu] [-o] [optname ...]
 declare [-aAfFgiIlnrtux] [-p] [name[=value] ...]                           source filename [arguments]
 dirs [-clpv] [+N] [-N]                                                     suspend [-f]
 disown [-h] [-ar] [jobspec ... | pid ...]                                  test [expr]
 echo [-neE] [arg ...]                                                      time [-p] pipeline
 enable [-a] [-dnps] [-f filename] [name ...]                               times
 eval [arg ...]                                                             trap [-lp] [[arg] signal_spec ...]
 exec [-cl] [-a name] [command [argument ...]] [redirection ...]            true
 exit [n]                                                                   type [-afptP] name [name ...]
 export [-fn] [name[=value] ...] or export -p                               typeset [-aAfFgiIlnrtux] [-p] name[=value] ...
 false                                                                      ulimit [-SHabcdefiklmnpqrstuvxPT] [limit]
 fc [-e ename] [-lnr] [first] [last] or fc -s [pat=rep] [command]           umask [-p] [-S] [mode]
 fg [job_spec]                                                              unalias [-a] name [name ...]
 for NAME [in WORDS ... ] ; do COMMANDS; done                               unset [-f] [-v] [-n] [name ...]
 for (( exp1; exp2; exp3 )); do COMMANDS; done                              until COMMANDS; do COMMANDS; done
 function name { COMMANDS ; } or name () { COMMANDS ; }                     variables - Names and meanings of some shell variables
 getopts optstring name [arg ...]                                           wait [-fn] [-p var] [id ...]
 hash [-lr] [-p pathname] [-dt] [name ...]                                  while COMMANDS; do COMMANDS; done
 help [-dms] [pattern ...]                                                  { COMMANDS ; }
waldek@hellodebian:~$ help cd
cd: cd [-L|[-P [-e]] [-@]] [dir]
    Change the shell working directory.
    
    Change the current directory to DIR.  The default DIR is the value of the
    HOME shell variable.
    
    The variable CDPATH defines the search path for the directory containing
    DIR.  Alternative directory names in CDPATH are separated by a colon (:).
    A null directory name is the same as the current directory.  If DIR begins
    with a slash (/), then CDPATH is not used.
    
    If the directory is not found, and the shell option `cdable_vars' is set,
    the word is assumed to be  a variable name.  If that variable has a value,
    its value is used for DIR.
    
    Options:
      -L	force symbolic links to be followed: resolve symbolic
    		links in DIR after processing instances of `..'
      -P	use the physical directory structure without following
    		symbolic links: resolve symbolic links in DIR before
    		processing instances of `..'
      -e	if the -P option is supplied, and the current working
    		directory cannot be determined successfully, exit with
    		a non-zero status
      -@	on systems that support it, present a file with extended
    		attributes as a directory containing the file attributes
    
    The default is to follow symbolic links, as if `-L' were specified.
    `..' is processed by removing the immediately previous pathname component
    back to a slash or the beginning of DIR.
    
    Exit Status:
    Returns 0 if the directory is changed, and if $PWD is set successfully when
    -P is used; non-zero otherwise.
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Last but not least there are a few extra programs to give you quick and condensed information about a program, whatis and apropos.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ whatis bash
bash (1)             - GNU Bourne-Again SHell
waldek@hellodebian:~$ apropos bash
bash (1)             - GNU Bourne-Again SHell
bash-builtins (7)    - bash built-in commands, see bash(1)
bashbug (1)          - report a bug in bash
builtins (7)         - bash built-in commands, see bash(1)
dh_bash-completion (1) - install bash completions for package
rbash (1)            - restricted bash, see bash(1)
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Exercise

Read some manual pages on the commands we've seen until now. Apply some options you read about in the manual to experiment with said programs.

Creating, modifying and deleting

We've seen how to navigate our filesystem and how to list files and directories at certain locations. Now let's learn how to add, modify and remove files and directories.

Directories

The main tool to create directories is mkdir. It's usage is pretty simple, it will create a directory at the location you specify as argument. This location can be absolute or relative. By default it will not create parent directories if needed but we can force it to do so with the -p flag.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos
waldek@hellodebian:~$ mkdir website
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos  website
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls website/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ mkdir website/page_one/assets
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘website/page_one/assets’: No such file or directory
waldek@hellodebian:~$ mkdir -p website/page_one/assets
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls -R website/
website/:
page_one

website/page_one:
assets

website/page_one/assets:
waldek@hellodebian:~$

The counterpart to mkdir is rmdir which can be used to remove empty directories. As it can only remove empty directories it's not used that much but it's worth knowing it exists.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ rmdir website/
rmdir: failed to remove 'website/': Directory not empty
waldek@hellodebian:~$ rmdir website/page_one/
rmdir: failed to remove 'website/page_one/': Directory not empty
waldek@hellodebian:~$ rmdir website/page_one/assets/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ rmdir website/page_one/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ rmdir website/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos
waldek@hellodebian:~$

To remove directories that have subdirectories or files in them we need to use an other program, rm but with a specific flag -r. It works as such.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ mkdir -p website/page_one/assets
waldek@hellodebian:~$ rm website/
rm: cannot remove 'website/': Is a directory
waldek@hellodebian:~$ rm -r website/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos
waldek@hellodebian:~$

There is no trash or recycle bin on the command line! Removed is removed so think before you hit enter.

Files

We can create empty files with the touch command. It's worth pointing out that using touch to create files is not it's main purpose. Reading the manual the fact that it creates files is kind of an extra feature. Non the less, it's widely used to create files.

TOUCH(1)                                                           User Commands                                                           TOUCH(1)

NAME
       touch - change file timestamps

SYNOPSIS
       touch [OPTION]... FILE...

DESCRIPTION
       Update the access and modification times of each FILE to the current time.

       A FILE argument that does not exist is created empty, unless -c or -h is supplied.

       A FILE argument string of - is handled specially and causes touch to change the times of the file associated with standard output.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

In practice it works as follows. We can create files with touch and delete them with rm. For deleting files we don't need any extra flags as opposed to directories.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ mkdir -p website/page_one/assets
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls website/
page_one
waldek@hellodebian:~$ touch website/index.html
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls website/
index.html  page_one
waldek@hellodebian:~$ file website/index.html 
website/index.html: empty
waldek@hellodebian:~$ rm website/index.html 
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls website/
page_one
waldek@hellodebian:~$ file website/index.html 
website/index.html: cannot open `website/index.html' (No such file or directory)
waldek@hellodebian:~$

What if you created the file in the wrong place? With mv we can move files from one location to an other. When you think about it, renaming is actually the same as moving so there is no specific program to rename files or folders.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ touch index.html
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  index.html  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos  website
waldek@hellodebian:~$ mv index.html website/indexxxx.html
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos  website
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls website/
indexxxx.html  page_one
waldek@hellodebian:~$ mv website/indexxxx.html website/index.html
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls website/
index.html  page_one
waldek@hellodebian:~$

We can also move entire directories from one location to another.

waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos  website
waldek@hellodebian:~$ mv website/ Documents/
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos
waldek@hellodebian:~$ ls -R Documents/
Documents/:
website

Documents/website:
index.html  page_one

Documents/website/page_one:
assets

Documents/website/page_one/assets:
waldek@hellodebian:~$

Copying is done with cp and behaves very similar to mv. For example.

waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$ ls
website
waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$ mv website/ website_1
waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$ ls
website_1
waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$ cp website_1/ website_2
cp: -r not specified; omitting directory 'website_1/'
waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$ cp -r website_1/ website_2
waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$ ls
website_1  website_2
waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$ ls -R
.:
website_1  website_2

./website_1:
index.html  page_one

./website_1/page_one:
assets

./website_1/page_one/assets:

./website_2:
index.html  page_one

./website_2/page_one:
assets

./website_2/page_one/assets:
waldek@hellodebian:~/Documents$

`nano`

The easiest to use command line editor that comes installed with most Linux distributions is called nano. Below is a screenshot of an empty text file, opened up in nano.

In this window we can write anything we want. I added two lines of text, but how do I save and quit this program? At the bottom of the screen there is a menu. ^X is the button to exit nano but how do we invoke it? Well, by pressing CRTL-x. By logical consequence to search the text file we can use CTRL-w. When you try to exit, dialog will pop up to ask you to save. If you answer Y, you'll be prompted for a filename. Here you can just hit ENTER.

Exercise

Create some text files with nano. Move them around with mv, delete them with rm and copy them with cp. Can you edit the /etc/passwd file?

`vi` and `vim`

On of the most popular text editors is by far vim. It is an improvement on an older editor called vi, vim(proved). Personally it is my favorite editor, or even program, on Linux and I can highly advise you to become somewhat comfortable with it. The learning curve is quite steep but so very much worth it! The reason why it is a bit complicated at first is because vim is a modal text editor. The paragraph below is taken from the wikipedia page of vi.

vi is a modal editor: it operates in either insert mode (where typed text becomes part of the document) or command mode (where keystrokes are interpreted as commands that control the edit session). For example, typing i while in command mode switches the editor to insert mode, but typing i again at this point places an "i" character in the document. From insert mode, pressing ESC switches the editor back to command mode. A perceived advantage of vi's separation of text entry and command modes is that both text editing and command operations can be performed without requiring the removal of the user's hands from the home row. As non-modal editors usually have to reserve all keys with letters and symbols for the printing of characters, any special commands for actions other than adding text to the buffer must be assigned to keys that do not produce characters, such as function keys, or combinations of modifier keys such as Ctrl, and Alt with regular keys. Vi has the property that most ordinary keys are connected to some kind of command for positioning, altering text, searching and so forth, either singly or in key combinations. Many commands can be touch typed without the use of Ctrl or Alt. Other types of editors generally require the user to move their hands from the home row when touch typing:

Exercise

The only way to learn vim is to use it. Luckily vim-nox comes with a dedicated program to learn it called vimtutor. It's actually a text file that you open up in vim where you just need to read and execute what you've read. Enjoy!

Once you have completed the vimtutor I urge you to have a look at one of the many cheat sheets online.

Opening files

We can use vim or nano to open text files and write to them, but there are a few programs worth knowing that can just show the content of a text file. You'll use these all the time! Before we've seen that head shows the first few lines of a file. To see the last lines of a file we use tail. Get it, head and tail? The linux world is full of little inside jokes like this. Anyway, the two most used programs to read file content are cat and less.

cat prints the content of a file straight to the terminal, where as less is what we call a pager. If you need to search or read a long file you'll find that a pager is more practical. Reading the man less page we see the following.

LESS(1)                         General Commands Manual                         LESS(1)

NAME
       less - opposite of more

Again, the joke here is that less can actually do more than more.

Exercise

Open up some files with cat and less. If you need some inspiration, try a few files in the /etc directory.

Finding stuff

Finding files

The easy way

On most distributions locate will not be installed by default but I advise you to install it, especially in the beginning of your linux career. The syntax is super simple and it fetches results from a database instead of the hard drive so it's quite quick and doesn't have permission problems. To install and use it, you should proceed as follows.

waldek@debian:~$ sudo apt install locate
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
locate is already the newest version (4.8.0-1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
waldek@debian:~$ locate bin/zip
/usr/bin/zipdetails
waldek@debian:~$ locate zip | grep bin # this is a weird thing...
/usr/bin/bunzip2
/usr/bin/bzip2
/usr/bin/bzip2recover
/usr/bin/gunzip
/usr/bin/gzip
/usr/bin/streamzip
/usr/bin/zipdetails
/usr/lib/klibc/bin/gunzip
/usr/lib/klibc/bin/gzip
waldek@debian:~$

You'll probably be a bit confused by the | part of the commands above. Don't worry, give it a few hours paragraphs and it will become fully transparent!

Next, there is a very high probability that the commands above don't immediately work for you. This is because locate functions with a database which needs to be updated from time to time. This is handled automatically by a cron job. We'll go into detail on how to schedule jobs ourselves but for now just remember you can trigger a refresh of the database yourself with the following command.

waldek@debian:~$ locate nano.html
waldek@debian:~$ sudo updatedb
waldek@debian:~$ locate nano.html
/usr/share/doc/nano/nano.html
waldek@debian:~$

The hard way

A program you'll find on most Linux distributions to search for files is find. It performs a real time search a crossed the entire file system and prints out the path of the file found. A simple example can be seen below.

waldek@debian:~$ find /usr -iname "nano.html"
/usr/share/doc/nano/nano.html
waldek@debian:~$

The real power lies in it's various command line arguments. We can for example search for all files which are bigger than 100MB, owned by a specific user or of a certain permission. All of these conditions can be combined to improve the specificity of your query. There are a few exercises below so I won't give too many spoiler. My best advise is to read man find and experiment.

Searching inside files

locate and find are used to search for files. To search for content inside files we can use an other very powerful tool called grep. It is often combined with regular expressions, or regex, for search for patterns. The syntax of regex's is a bit challenging but, like vim, it is very much worth the effort. Even more, you can use regex's inside vim to search and replace text! This being said, you can use grep without regular expressions as well and this is what we'll do first.

Most distributions will come with some dictionaries installed. We can find the American one with the locate command. The third one in line is the one we need, but have a look at the other files if you're intrigued.

waldek@debian:~$ locate american
/usr/lib/ispell/american.aff
/usr/lib/ispell/american.hash
/usr/share/dict/american-english
/usr/share/doc/iamerican
/usr/share/doc/wamerican
/usr/share/doc/wamerican/NEWS.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/wamerican/README.Debian
/usr/share/doc/wamerican/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/wamerican/copyright
/usr/share/doc/wamerican/wamerican.scowl-word-lists-used
/usr/share/ispell/american.med+.mwl.gz
/usr/share/ispell/american.mwl.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/american-english.5.gz
/var/lib/dictionaries-common/ispell/iamerican
/var/lib/dictionaries-common/wordlist/wamerican
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iamerican.config
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iamerican.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iamerican.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iamerican.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iamerican.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iamerican.preinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/iamerican.templates
/var/lib/dpkg/info/wamerican.config
/var/lib/dpkg/info/wamerican.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/wamerican.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/wamerican.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/wamerican.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/wamerican.templates
/var/lib/ispell/american.compat
/var/lib/ispell/american.hash
/var/lib/ispell/american.remove

We can use grep to find all occurrences of the word hippo with the following syntax.

waldek@debian:~$ grep "hippop" /usr/share/dict/american-english
hippopotami
hippopotamus
hippopotamus's
hippopotamuses
waldek@debian:~$

We can search for multiple patterns with the | character but this character has a special meaning in the shell so we need to escape it with a \ or we can use extended grep with either egrep or grep -E. The exact meaning of | will come clear in a bit, but in this context it means or.

waldek@debian:~$ grep "hippo\|tamu" /usr/share/dict/american-english
Metamucil
Metamucil's
hippo
hippo's
hippopotami
hippopotamus
hippopotamus's
hippopotamuses
hippos
whippoorwill
whippoorwill's
whippoorwills
waldek@debian:~$ grep -E "hippo|tamu" /usr/share/dict/american-english
Metamucil
Metamucil's
hippo
hippo's
hippopotami
hippopotamus
hippopotamus's
hippopotamuses
hippos
whippoorwill
whippoorwill's
whippoorwills
waldek@debian:~$

Adding the --color argument to `grep will make the matched patterns jump out with a color, depending on the color scheme of your terminal.

Wildcards and regular expressions

Both are quite related and for simplicities sake you can view regular expressions as wildcards on steroids. A more detailed explaination can be found here. The syntax for wildcards is rater simple and also goes by the name of globbing of filename expansion. The most important rules to remember are the following.

character	meaning
?	one character, one times
*	any character, any number of times
[a-z]	matches all lowercase letters
[0-9]	matches all numbers
[ac9]	matches a or c or 9

Exercise

You can download and extract this to try and match some patterns with wildcards. For example.

waldek@helloworld:~$ ls *bo?ma*
aboymadozscmguidzrfh.txt  bopmamzrcoqjmkjmjdow.txt  obotmaorizmnrnycrjld.txt
waldek@helloworld:~$ ls cat*
catdmkskxbpgbijcsrbw.txt  catlauqronedqtgyjrlj.txt  catlocxdfvuqucyhrtti.txt  catxvlgrwtvhgnohwqsc.txt
waldek@helloworld:~$ ls *boom*
mmnjgibpbvqkpboomgpu.txt  phxbprfdyzboomqedgwu.txt  yqrjsjdizlwjenlboomk.txt
waldek@helloworld:~$ ls *bo?ma*
aboymadozscmguidzrfh.txt  bopmamzrcoqjmkjmjdow.txt  obotmaorizmnrnycrjld.txt
waldek@helloworld:~$

I understand that the examples don't make any practical sense but it's a quick and easy way to learn some basic wildcards You can download a second file that contains a lot of files with lowercase letters and numbers. There you can try and match some patterns to make your list smaller and smaller. For example.

waldek@helloworld:~$ ls [6-9][0-3][ab]?x*
63aaxc38fp7t5celiiqj  70b2xt9iu9my6amgdeyu  93ayxw6c4tf1du3y4pgu  93bsxleuz0t8gogga301
70abx7v1dzhun41fywdz  92bvx59br7goqqbo4h5o  93azx9zfm5mpf9ukm412
waldek@helloworld:~$

Exercise

Inside a clean minimal installation can you please:

find all files that are 3286 bytes
find all files not owned by root and $USER (yourself)
find all symbolic links
find all files that contain ssh in the filename and are smaller that 10 bytes
find all files in /usr that contain the word hippo
find all files in /usr that contain the word hippop or hiphop
find all Belgian email addresses in /usr
exercise from Linux long

62 KiB Raw Blame History Unescape Escape

Introduction to the command line

Compiled vs interpreted

Note on file extensions

More about paths

Absolute and relative paths

root and / and /root are not the same thing

Exercise

A pit stop to review what we've learned so far

Arguments and flags

Getting help

Options

Manuals

Exercise

Creating, modifying and deleting

Directories

Files

nano

Exercise

vi and vim

Exercise

Opening files

Exercise

Finding stuff

Finding files

The easy way

The hard way

Searching inside files

Wildcards and regular expressions

Exercise

Exercise

Pipes and redirects

62 KiB

Raw Blame History

`root` and `/` and `/root` are not the same thing

`nano`

`vi` and `vim`