Command Line

This is a simple guide to learning Command Line with learn code the hard way. Don’t worry; it’s actually a quite simple and quick guide to get you started on the very important command line used with coding.

Here is the short but very useful guide to try.

I found it useful to complete the ‘Do More’ section on each page as well as trying out a few things of my own to really get this in your head. I have also currently bookmarked this page to use as a great reference for if I forget anything. I am however, going to search around for a more detailed site to look at and use for future reference for anything else that may be useful.

You may also find that a couple of times you’re not 100% certain on what is being completed on the task, for instance the ‘Moving a File’ tutorial didn’t fully explain how you could create a file in one folder and completely move it to another folder. I did a bit of extra research on this and found this site: Macworld features a handy description further down the page on what parameters need to be passed in.

By source and destination as you can see, it literally means the description you would get it you right clicked on the file and looked under it’s description.

There is a lot of reading that can be done, if you choose so, with the ‘Getting Command Help’ section as you’ll see, but this is really useful in teaching you beyond the few tasks you’ve already been taught. I’ll be honest, I’ve not really put anything else into practice so far, but I’ve at least had a play around with a few on the command line, so I’d advice giving a few a go yourself just to test out what you’ve already learnt and expand upon those a little.

Other than this, the quick tutorial is a really useful introduction into the command line and the many things you can do with it and use it for. I’d advise everyone to check it out. There are also cheat sheets available on the ‘Next Steps’ section, use the one that’s right for your system.

Command line in Windows

Cygwin is an old but usefull tool that allows you to have an Unix enviroment inside a Windows machine. Most of the commands and tools of a typical Linux distribution are available there. It´s a great way to practice and learn.