Command Line Basics

Question 1

What are the three great virtues of a programmer?

Answer 1

1. Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it.
2. Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.
3. Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about.

Question 2

What is a GUI?

Answer 2

Graphical User Interface

• allows user to interact with the computer using icons
• directly manipulate items with graphics (click on them)

Question 3

What is a CLI?

Answer 3

Command Line Interface

-user gives commands to the computer in lines of text

Question 4

man

Answer 4

displayed before command you want to know more info about (man ls tells you what ls does and the options)

Question 5

cat

Answer 5

combines many files into one, displays file text

Question 6

ls

Answer 6

shows the files and directories in chosen directory

Question 7

pwd

Answer 7

shows full file path up to current working directory

Question 8

echo

Answer 8

prints the words chosen onto terminal (echo ‘hi’ just prints hi onto terminal)

Question 9

touch

Answer 9

creates files
It is also used to change the timestamps (i.e., dates and times of the most recent access and modification) on existing files and directories.

Question 10

mkdir

Answer 10

makes directory

Question 11

mv

Answer 11

moves or renames files

Question 12

rf

Answer 12

removes files or directories

Question 13

cp

Answer 13

copies files or directories