UNIX Command Cheat Sheet
Physics 91 SI Handout 04
Alex Ji and Zahan Malkani
Command Description Examples and Options
Most Important Command!
man Manual for other commands. man cat
Navigating Directories
ls List the contents of the directory. ls -lart /afs/ir.stanford.edu
cd Change directory. cd WWW/
pwd Print working directory. pwd
Modifying Directories and Files
mkdir Make new directory. mkdir physics91SI
rmdir Remove directory. rmdir physics91SI
mv Move files. mv -i foo.txt foo2.txt
cp Copy files. cp -i ../foo.txt .
rm Remove files. (Cannot undo!) rm -i foo.txt
Viewing Files in Terminal
less View files easily. less foo.txt
cat Concatenate files. cat foo1.txt foo2.txt
Important Symbols
*Wild card, any number of charac-
ters.
ls *.txt
?Wild card, 0 or 1 characters. ls foo?.txt
.Current directory. cd .
.. Directory one level up. cd ..
&Run process in background. emacs &
|Pipe/filter output through another
program.
cat foo.txt | less
>Redirect standard output to. cat foo.txt >foo2.txt
<Redirect standard input from. less <foo.txt
Common text editors: emacs,vim,vi,pico,nano
