Bash and Linux command line

BASH (or Bourne against Shell) is the basic command line interpteter for the UNIX-based operation systems (Like MacOS, or Linux). Most of the apps and scripts used in the lab are based on Bash.

The University of Toronto Coders have a great tutorial lesson where they cover basic aspects of interacting with computer and file system using BASH.

Shell-command cheat sheet

Here you can find the most frequently used BASH commands.

Shell command	action
pwd	present working directory
ls [dir]	list the directory contents
mkdir dir	create a directory
cd [dir]	change directory
man cmd	command’s man page
echo arg	echo the argument
source file	run the cmds in file
cp file1 file2	copy a file
mv file1 file2	move/rename a file
rm file	delete a file
wc file	word count data of file
grep arg file	search for arg in file
rmdir dir	delete a directory
history [num]	print the shell history
file file	type of file
more file	scroll through file
less file	scroll through file
cat file	print the file contents
cmd > file	redirect output to file
cmd » file	append output to file
cmd < file	use file as input to cmd
head file	print first 10 lines of file
tail file	print last 10 lines of file
curl url	downloads the url
tar file	handles tar files
sort file	sorts the lines of file
cut flags output	cut part of output
for..do..done	for loop in bash
if..then..fi	if statement in bash
tail -f filename	tail the log file (useful for the sbatch cluster jobs)
logout	close the terminal session