A presentation to our designers at DStv Digital Media to get them started using the OSX Terminal application. Paves the way for being able to use more powerful design tooling. Presented on 9 June 2016.

1. OSX’s Free Swiss Army Knife
The Mighty OSX Terminal

2. OSX Roots

3. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X#/media/File:Unix_timeline.en.svg

4. The File System

5. /
/Applications /Library /System /Users /Volumes
/bin /etc /dev /opt /usr
user1
user2
App1
App2
… …

6. File System Properties
Name - The unique (case-sensitive) name of a file/directory.
Size - How many bytes/kB/MB/GB does a file take up?
Permissions - Strict control of who can access which files/directories, and
what they can/can’t do with those files.
Timestamps - When files were created or last modified.
Owner - Which user “owns” this file? (for permissions)
Group - Which system “group” has access to this file? (permissions)

7. File System Permissions
Owner/Group/Other System
Permissions apply separately to the owner, the group, and other users (those
who fall outside of being the owner or part of the group).
Read/Write/Execute Permissions
Can the owner read/write/execute the file?
Can the group read/write/execute the file?
Can other users read/write/execute the file?
(Execute doesn’t apply to directories)

8. Fire it Up

9. cmd ⌘ + Space

10. Terminal Window
Current Folder
Prompt

11. Pro Tip!

12. http://brew.sh

13. Quick Reference

14. Paths (1)
.
The current directory.
..
The parent directory.
/
The root directory.

15. Paths (2)
~
Refers to the current user’s home folder.
~/Documents
The folder called “Documents” within the current user’s home folder.

16. Paths (3)
*
“Wildcard” used in a path. Used alone, refers to all files and subfolders in
the current folder.
*.txt
All files whose names end in “.txt”.
some_file*
All files/folders whose names start with “some_file”.

17. Relative Paths (1)
./some_file.txt
A “relative” path, relative to the current folder.
./subfolder/other/folder/some_other_file.txt
A more complex “relative” path.
../some_file.txt
A file called “some_file.txt” in the parent folder.

18. Relative Paths (2)
../../some_file.txt
A file called “some_file.txt” in the parent folder of our current parent
folder (two “levels” up).

19. Basic Navigation (1)
pwd
Print the full path of the current working directory. (“Print working
directory”)
ls
List the contents of the current directory.
cd /path/to/other/directory
Change the current working directory to “/path/to/other/directory”.

20. Basic Navigation (2)
ls -lh
List the contents of the current directory, but show the contents as a list
and in a human-friendlier manner than usual.
ls /other/folder
List the contents of “/other/folder”.
ls ..
List the contents of the current folder’s parent folder.

21. Basic Navigation (3)
ls .
Exactly the same as just running “ls”.
ls /
List the contents of the file system root directory.
ls -a
List all files, including hidden files, in the current directory.

22. File Contents (1)
cat some_file.txt
Will display the contents of “some_file.txt”, from the current folder, in
the terminal.
cat some_file.txt | less
“Pipes” the output from the “cat” command through the “less” program,
effectively allowing you to scroll through the content of “some_file.txt”.

23. File Contents (2)
cat file1.txt file2.txt
First outputs the contents of “file1.txt”, then the contents of “file2.txt”,
to the terminal.
echo “Hello world!” > hello.txt
Will write the text “Hello world!” into the text file called “hello.txt” in
the current directory. If that file does not exist, it will be created. If
it does exist, its existing contents will be replaced.

24. File Contents (3)
cat file1.txt file2.txt > file_concatenated.txt
Dumps the concatenated contents of “file1.txt”, followed by the contents of
“file2.txt”, into another file called “file_concatenated.txt”.

25. File Contents (4)
grep “Hello” *.txt
Search for the exact string “Hello” (case-sensitive) in all of the .txt
files in the current folder.
grep -i “hello” *.txt
Search for the string “hello” (case-insensitive) in all of the .txt files in
the current folder.

26. File Contents (5)
grep -ir “hello” *
Search recursively (through all of the subfolders in the current folder too)
through all files (*) for the string “hello” (case-insensitive).

27. File Copying
cp some_file.txt /other/folder
Copies the file “some_file.txt” in our current folder into the folder whose
path is “/other/folder”.
cp *.txt /other/folder
Copies all of the files, from the current folder, whose name ends in “.txt”
into “/other/folder”.

28. Folder Copying
cp -R ./mysubfolder /other/folder
Recursively copies all of the contents of “mysubfolder” (a folder within our
current folder) into the directory called “/other/folder”, resulting in a
new folder “/other/folder/mysubfolder” whose contents will be the same as
“./mysubfolder”.

29. Deleting Files
rm some_file.txt
Removes the file in the current directory called “some_file.txt”.
rm ./subfolder/some_file.txt
Removes the file called “some_file.txt” within this folder’s sub-folder
called “subfolder”.

30. Deleting Folders
WARNING! Be careful with these commands.
rm -rf ./subfolder/
Removes all of the contents of the subfolder called “subfolder”, and removes
the folder itself as well.

31. Executing Commands
./some_executable
Executes the application called “some_executable” in the current directory.
some_executable
Assumes that the executable called “some_executable” is in your system
“path” - a well-known location to the shell.

32. Historical Commands
history
Gives a numbered, chronologically ordered listing of all of the commands you
have previously executed.
!321
When looking at the output from the “history” command, running this executes
command number 321 from the list.

33. Additional Commands
clear
Clears the contents of the terminal (usually for readability purposes).
which some_executable
Tells you the path where the best candidate for “some_executable” will be.
man command_name
Shows the help manual for the command “command_name” (replace with pretty
much any command).