🧑‍💻 Terminal and Shell Commands Cheatsheet For Mac Users

The shell takes commands and executes them against the operating system. The terminal is a program that wraps the shell. This list includes common commands and scripts for learning more about navigating the terminal.

This Repo is a resource for Terminal and Shell command scripting. To make a contribution to this directory, please make a pull request. Requests will be reviewed in the order received.

Resource List

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Learn Shell.Org

Basic Commands

• Clear the window: ( control + l )
• Also clears the window: clear
• Open a new window vertical: ( cmd + t )
• Open another vertical window: ( cmd + d )
• Open a horizontal window: ( shift + cmd + d )
• Delete a window: ( cmd + w )
• How to delete one word at a time going forwards: ( option + d )
• How to delete one word at a time going backwards: ( option + backspace )
• Navigate to the beginning of a line in terminal: ( control + a )
• Navigate to the end of a line in terminal: ( control + e )
• How to scroll up and down in the window: ( shift + arrow buttons )
• How to get out of vi: ( cmd + :q! )
• How to move cursor forwards or backwards over text to delete or just move back: ( command + b )

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Using & Installing iTerm

• iTerm recommended by developers as a better terminal

[download iTerm]("https://iterm2.com/downloads.html") - How to check if you're using bash or zsh: in the iTerm window

echo $SHELL

• ** zsh ** everything applicable to zsh is applicable to bash.
• How to change from bash to zsh: in the iTerm window

chsh -s /bin/zsh

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Using & Installing On My ZSH

An open source framework for mananging your zsh configuration

• How to install Oh My ZSH

` sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)" `

• Get the docs for Oh My ZSH: vi .zshrc

- [customizing your Oh MY zsh theme](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/wiki/Themes)

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Introduction To Shell Commands

1. How to access the manual page... this will work for any command to learn more info about how each command works man
2. "What manual page do you want?" man + ( command ) type man and the command you want the manual for
3. type q to exit/quit

• start typing a file name then press ( tab ) to finish the file name
• date gives the current date and time
• cal shows your calender add the year ex: cal 2022 for full years calender
• whoami gives the user name
• history gives the history of all terminal commands ran and a number for each one
• !155 to run that command again
• history | grep "grep" shows the history of the grep command
• !! gives you the previous command ran in the terminal
• ^rep^grep replaces rep with grep in the last command ran

Working with directories (folders and directories used interchangablity)

• . your current directory
• pwd gets working path directory
• ls shows the contents inside of the current working directory
• ls -a shows files that begin with a "."
• ls -al shows more details about the files
• cd change directory/file/folder
• cd ~ go back to the root directory
• cd .. go back one level in the directory
• cd ../.. go back two levels, keep chaining on /.. for more levels
• cd - go back to the previous folder
• mkdir ( + file_name ) makes a new file in whatever directory you are currently in
• mkdir -p ( + file_name/another_file/one_more_file ) creates sub directories
• rm + -rf ( + file_name ) removes a file and it's root directory CAN NOT BE UNDONE
• mv ( + file_1 + file_2 ) moves file_1 inside of file_2
• tree -- help to see tree commands, will need to install tree with Homebrew
• mv ( rename_this + new_file_name ) How to give your file a new name

Working with files

• touch ( my_file.py ) creates a new my_file.py file
• rm ( file_name* ) removes any file that starts with "file_name"
• echo prints the specified text string before listing of all the files in the current working directory
• ( > ) override
• ( >> ) append
• cat ( + file_name ) view the contents of your file
• less ( + file_name ) view less of the content, press spacebar to paginate over the file contents
• head ( + file_name ) view the first 10 lines of the file contents
• tail ( + file_name ) view the last 10 lines of the contents
• cp ( + file_to_copy + new_file_name ) copies the contents of one file to a new file
• cp ( * .file_extension + folder_name ) moves all files with this file extension to the specified folder.
• cp -r ( * folder_name + new_folder ) moves all folders to a new folder
• find . lists every file in the current working folders
• find . -type f -name file_name.ext finds the specified file/s sub -iname in place of -name to ignore the case sensitivity if files add -delete to remove the file instead
• find . -type f -name "*.ext" finds all files with the specified extension
• find . -type f -empty finds all of the empty files remove -type to find all empty folders

RegEx

• man grep to get the manual for this command grep stands for, global regular expression print works with both folders and files
• grep -r ( + "REGEX Goes here" + file_name ) and is used to search recursive text within files
• grep -ni ( + "REGEX" ) search for the line number and ignore the letter case
• grep -rni -A 1 -B 1 ( + "REGEX" ) search for one line before and one line after the results adjust the numbers as needed
• grep works with REGEX and any other text as well