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Unix Command Line HOWTO

Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca

Version 0.5 -- 2011 December 09

This is the UNIX Command Line HOWTO. This document is intended for new Linux users, although most of it should be useful for anyone starting to use any form of UNIX. This document provides an explanation of the UNIX keyboard commands that are most likely to be useful to general users.

1. Introduction

1.1 Scope
1.2 Document Structure
1.3 Copyright

2. UNIX

2.1 UNIX Pathnames
2.2 File Extensions
2.3 What is all this about foo?
2.4 Pathname Wildcards
2.5 UNIX Commands
2.6 Getting Help (man)

3. Accessing the UNIX Shell

3.1 Types of UNIX Shell
3.2 Console and Terminal Shells
3.3 X11
3.4 Launching an Xterm
3.5 Keyboard Copy and Paste

4. Managing Directories

4.1 What Directory Am I In?
4.2 Changing Directories
4.3 Listing Directory Contents
4.4 Creating a New Directory
4.5 Deleting a Directory
4.6 Setting Directory Permissions

5. Managing Files

5.1 What Kind of File is This?
5.2 Reading Text Files
5.3 Editing Text Files
5.4 Copying Files
5.5 Moving (Renaming) Files
5.6 Deleting Files
5.7 Setting File Permissions
5.8 Intelligent File Searches (find)
5.9 Intelligent File Searches (grep)
5.10 Intelligent File Searches (find and grep)
5.11 Creating a CD-ROM/DVD Database

6. Archives, Distributions and File Compression

6.1 Tape Archives
6.2 Gnuzip and Bzip
6.3 Zip
6.4 Rar
6.5 Compress
6.6 Red Hat Package Manager
6.7 Slackware Packages
6.8 Debian Packages
6.9 MacIntosh Archives

7. Command Shell Scripts

8. TODO List

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