If you work with linux operating system you should know about how to efficiently work with files and directories.
In this tutorial we will cover all commands that are related to either files or directories.
How to list files or directories?
To see all files and directories within a given directory followings are some of the useful commands:
# list the contents of the current directory ls dir_name/ # list the content of the directory including hidden files ls -la dir_name/
How to make, switch or remove directories?
To create new directories in linux operating system use following commands:
# create a new directory mkdir dir_name # create a dir and create parent dir # if it does not exists mkdir -p dir_name/child_dir # to remove a directory rmdir dir_name # This command forcefully and recursively # deletes a directory along with its content. rm -rf dir_name # to change the directory cd target_dir cd /tmp # go one directory back cd ..
How to create a file in linux?
To perform following operations on a file:
- create a new file
- remove a file
- check file contents
- get first/last lines of the files
following commands are useful:
# create a new file touch hello.txt # remove a file rm hello.txt # remove a file forcefully rm -f hello.txt # check the content of the file cat hello.txt # get the first 10 lines from the file head hello.txt # get first n number of lines from the file head -n hello.txt # get last 10 lines from the file tail hello.txt # get last n number of lines from the file tail -n hello.txt
How to determine the file type of a file
# check the file type file file.txt # output of the above command file.txt: ASCII text # to check file type only file -b file.txt # output of the above command ASCII text # check the mime type of the file file -i file.txt # output of the above command file.txt: text/plain; charset=us-ascii # checking mime type without filename file -i -b file.txt # output of the above command text/plain; charset=us-ascii # check the file type for compressed files file -z bar.txt.gz # output of the above command bar.txt.gz: ASCII text (gzip compressed data, was "bar.txt", last modified: Wed Sep 7 19:31:23 2016, from Unix)
credit: https://shapeshed.com/unix-file/
How to copy files in linux?
To copy files from one to other location in linux operating system following commands are used:
# copy all html files from source to destination folder cp -u source/*.html destination/
How to move files in linux?
To move files from one to other location in linux operating system following commands are used:
# copy all html files from source to destination folder mv source/*.html destination/ # This command copies the content of directory source into directory destination. cp -r source/ destination/
How to remove files in linux?
To remove files in linux operating system following commands are used:
# remove single text file rm file.txt # remove all text file rm *.txt # force remove all files along with folder rm -rf destination/
Note: Linux does not have an undelete command so be careful if you delete files or folders.