Terminal and Command-Line Cheat Sheet

man <command>

Quit by pressing q.

man ls
man cd
man mkdir

Whenever entering (long) paths or file names, the TAB key comes in very handy, because it autocompletes the end or proposes how to complete. Autocompletion is so handy…

Imagine you want to enter in this fictional directory, by typing all these components:

cd /data/home/alturi/project/long-filename.ext

Prone error !! Instead, the TAB key is magic, try:

cd /d[TAB]ata/h[TAB]ome/al[TAB]turi/pro[TAB]ject/lo[TAB]ng-filename.ext

When you type ambiguous character (e.g., pro should point to your fictional folder project/ or product/), the completion does not work. In that case, hit TAB twice to view all the possible matches and then type a few more characters.

Just use ARROW UP and DOWN to navigate through the history.

List all the recent history:

history

pwd

Show the absolute path.

mkdir <name>

You can also create the directory and couple of subfolders:

mkdir -p my-project/this/that

cd <directory>

For example, go to the previous created folder, and verify you are in:

cd my-project/this/that
pwd

Go at one level up (parent directory) and verify again:

cd ..
pwd

Go to the folder that/ then go at two levels up:

cd that/
pwd
cd ../..
pwd

Note that:

cd

go to the $HOME folder.

ls <directory>

and without any <directory> name, list the current folder.

List all the files, even the hidden ones:

ls -a

List the files and sort them by reverse order of modified time:

ls -rt1

List the files with some useful information (permissions, owner, size etc.)

ls -l

List recursively through the subfolders:

ls -R

less <filename>

Quit with :q.

head -nN <filename>
tail -nN <filename>

For example, display the first 5 commands:

head -n5 ~/.bash_history

clear

Nothing is erased, it is pure cosmetic by refreshing.

cp <source> <target>

For example, copy the history of the command lines and list the folder:

cp ~/.bash_history ~/my-history
ls -rt1

After creating a new folder, copy the file into it:

cp my-history my-project/this/that
ls my[TAB]-project/[TAB]this/[TAB]that/

Copy folders:

cp -R my-project my-project2
ls -R my-project2

mv <source> <target>

rm <filename>
rm -fr <filename>

The option -f means force. Be careful !!

find <dir> -name "<filename>" -type f

For example, list all the files with the extensions .fastq.gz in the current folder:

find . -name "*.fastq.gz" -type f -print

Find all Pearl files .pl containing the occurence xls and print the line:

find . -type f -name "*.pl" -print | xargs grep -nH xls

rsync -av --progress <source> <target>

For example, push local folder to server toto.tata.univ-paris-diderot.fr:

rsync -av --progress my-project username@toto.tata.univ-paris-diderot.fr:~/

Pull remote folder:

rsync -av --progress username@toto.tata.univ-paris-diderot.fr:~/my-project my-project2

Be careful with the trailing slash /. Explanations later !

CONTROL c

Or you can find the process number with:

ps -fe | less

and identify the guilty.