In this section we will be going over the following commonly used commands:

pwd, ls, cd, mkdir

Type pwd (print working directory) into your terminal. If your username is cookie, you might see:

• /Users/cookie (on a Mac)
• /home/cookie (on Ubuntu)
• C:\Users\cookie\Documents (on Windows).
  • If you are on Windows, type cd .. to go up a folder; then if you type pwd again, you should see C:\Users\cookie\.

This is the folder in which all your files and folders are saved, called the home folder.

Type ls (list), **or dir (directory)** for Windows, into your terminal. This command shows you a list of all the files and folders in the current folder (which should be your home folder). Desktop should be one of the folders; let's go in there!

cd (change directory) is the command that lets you go into a folder. However, you need to tell the computer which folder to go into. You need to type cd Desktop and press Enter to go into the Desktop folder.

Pro tip: You can type cd Desk and then hit tab to auto-complete. Software engineers use tab to type less, which reduces the chance of typos. If you have multiple files and folders that start with the same name, hitting tab may fail because the computer does not know how to autocomplete your request. You will have to type a few more characters and then hit tab.

mkdir notes2357 creates a new folder called notes2357 in the current folder (which should be Desktop), and you should be able to see the folder if look at your desktop in the GUI.

To see all the files and folder in your desktop folder, type ls (dir for Windows).

Path

The path to a folder is the list of all the other folders you have to go through to get to it. The longer the path is, the "deeper" that folder is nested inside other folders. To see the full path of where you currently are, you can type pwd (cd for Windows).

When using paths, ~ is a short way to write out the path to your home folder:

• For example, if your home folder is /home/cookie, mkdir ~/Desktop/notes2357/curriculum will create a folder called curriculum inside the notes2357 folder.

.. means the parent folder:

Let's assume our current path is: /home/cookie/Desktop/notes2357/curriculum

• ls .. will list out the files and folders in /home/cookie/Desktop/notes2357
• ls ../../.. will list out the files and folders in /home/cookie
• cd ../.. will take you to /home/cookie/Desktop/

Make sure you include a space between the command (ls) and the options (like .., ../.., etc.).