Basic linux commands everyone should know!

Here are a few simple linux commands that should make life a bit easier for you. Please everyone, add anything you think would be useful!

You may want to read the computer office's introduction to Unix booklet .

A really useful guide to bash scripting.

• cd

The 'change directory' command

cd
cd ~ 
cd /home/user

These all take you to your home directory

cd ../..

This takes you up two levels of the directory tree

cd newdir

This takes you into the directory called newdir

cd ~/Documents

This takes you into you Documents folder (actually located at /home/user/Documents)

cd ~csw34

This takes you into the home directory of user csw34

cd /sharedscratch/user

This takes you to your sharedscratch directory (only on clusters)

• mkdir

mkdir newdir newdir2

This will create two new directories, newdir and newdir2

mkdir -p newdir/newdir2

This will create newdir and newdir/newdir2, even if the former doesn't exist.

• xxdiff

xxdiff file1 file2

Much clearer than regular diff (graphical output).

• svn

The subversion version control program. Detailed info is available on the SVN Page

• find

Can do so much, in a somewhat idiosyncratic manner! See this guide.