pwd # /Users/universe/Desktop/space/neptune pwd # /Users/universe/Desktop/space/neptune/naiad cd. Let’s use the following command to move one level up in the directory hierarchy. Here, the parent directory of naiad is neptune. (two periods) represents or points to the directory that contains the current directory, also known as the parent directory. Now we should be inside the naiad directory. cd space/neptune/naiadīoth commands will produce the same result. Or you can use the following command to access the naiad directory. Let’s use this command to access the space directory we have created previously. The cd command stands for Change Directory. We don’t have to provide the -p option for this command because the path space/neptune exists already. If we want to create our third folder naiad under neptune, we can use the following command. The above command will create a folder called space and a nested folder or subfolder neptune.

We can create multiple directories using the -p option. Here we are creating a directory on my Desktop called neptune.

The mkdir command stands for Make Directory. The shell ignores a word if it starts with # (hash) and any remaining characters on that line. It will print the full path to the current working directory. The pwd command stands for Print Working Directory. You’ll learn some basic shell commands from this post to improve daily workflow by saving time and effort.

chsh -s /bin/bashĭepending on which shell you’re using, you’ll get different features. Now let’s go through some basic shell commands to see what is happening. The macOS X comes with the bash shell (Bourne Again shell), but you can change your shell to csh (C shell), zsh (Z shell), ksh (Korn Shell), tcsh (TENEX C Shell), etc. It allows us to control command-line tools. Shell is an environment where we can run our shell commands and shell scripts. This Terminal provides you with the shell. To be able to run these commands, we need to use the Terminal application. mkdir test cd test for i in do mkdir '$i' done For example, you can run text commands to create 100 folders, but it will take more time and effort to achieve the same result via a GUI application. It’s a powerful way to interact with a computer. Even though GUI applications remain popular among vast users, a command-line interface gives users more control over their computer by running text commands. Most computer users interact via a graphical user interface because it’s an easy way to manipulate a machine.

List of commands for terminal emulator