Basic Unix Commands

ls

Basic listing

ls -F

Basic listing, with file type notations (-F)

ls -al

Listing, showing all, including hidden, files (-a) in long format (-l), which includes permissions, modify dates, ownership, etc

cd or cd ~

Change to home directory

cd directory

Change to directory, which is a subdirectory of current directory

cd /directory

Change to directory, which exists under the root directory

cd ..

Change to parent of current directory

cd ~user

Change to user's directory

pwd

Prints the full path of the current directory

cp sourcefile destfile

Copies contents of sourcefile to destfile

cp file .

Copies source file to current directory

rm file

Remove file

rm *

Remove all files in current directory

rm -R directory

Remove directory directory, including all its files and subdirectories

chmod vector file

Change permissions on file to user, group, and all permissions delineated by vector, where:

7 = rwx

6 = rw-

5 = r-x

4 = r--

3 = -wx

2 = -w-

1 = --x

0 = ---

chmod change file

Change a specific permission change on file. Examples include +x, -x, +gw, -ar

chown user file

Change ownership of file to user

chown user:group file

Change ownership of file to user user and group group

ln -s file link

Creates a symbolic link called link to file

tar -xvf tarfile

Expands the tarfile, including directory structure, starting from the current working directory

tar -cf tarfile sourcefile

Creates a tar archive named tarfile using the file or directory specified by sourcefile

gzip file

Compress file file

gunzip file

Decompress file file