[Bradford] Intro to the command line

[Philip Wyett]

On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 08:27 +0000, David Carpenter wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> At the last meeting there was a request for a beginners guide to the
> command line at some point.
> 
> Would anyone be interested in putting that together?
> 
> Perhaps one way to do it would be for everyone that is familiar with it
> to bring their 3 top tips, and then we can share them. (I think is also
> a way of keeping it interesting for the command line wizards -you're
> bound to learn something!)
> 
> (Ctrl+Shift then X,C,V for cut copy and paste - the joy the day I was
> told about that!)
> 
> Another thing to consider, might be to base it around things you have
> found really useful rather than (or as well as) 'theoretical' uses.
> 

Hmm... three top tips for the terminal.

1) CTRL+R. This allows you to search your command history and auto find
that long command you use often. As you type more of a command line it
will offers the closest match. Once it offers what you want, stop typing
hit ENTER. Save those tired fingers. ;-)

2) Resetting and clearing. Clearing the terminal is fun and games even
on established distros as even under gnome on Ubuntu it get it wrong out
of the menu system and most how to do this the wrong way round. Many
tips will say do:

  reset;clear

when actually to do it right and end up with a new prompt in an empty
terminal it should be:

  clear;reset

3) Long paths. Many folks when having to enter long paths will do
the /home/your_username/.. either manually or each partially and TAB
complete each folder. No no no... To have the terminal insert your path
to you HOME folder quickly use:

  ~/

i.e. ls ~/

To see it at work do: cd ~/ and hit TAB and watch it self complete too
your HOME folder.

OK that's three useful ones off the top of my head. ;-)

Regards

Phil

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