Introduction to Shell
Description
The Unix command line has survived and thrived for almost fifty years because it lets people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. It helps users combine existing programs in new ways, automate repetitive tasks, and run programs on clusters and clouds that may be halfway around the world. This lesson will introduce its key elements and show you how to use them efficiently.
Learning objectives
- Explain the similarities and differences between the Unix shell and graphical user interfaces.
- Use core Unix commands to create, rename, and remove files and directories.
- Explain what files and directories are.
- Match files and directories to relative and absolute paths.
- Use core data manipulation commands to filter and sort textual data by position and value.
- Find and interpret help.
- Predict the paths matched by wildcards and specify wildcards to match sets of paths.
- Combine programs using pipes to process large data sets.
- Set and use variables to record information.
- Use loops to run the same commands on many different files.
Prerequisites