The Command Line

18 Jan 2022

Below consider the a set of commands to navigate your computer’s file system from the command line (i.e., the Command Prompt on Windows and the Terminal on the Mac).

Windows (cmd.exe)

• dir returns the contents of the current directory (i.e., folder)
• cd XYZ changes from the current directory to the subdirectory XYZ
• cd .. moves to a directory one level up (toward the root directory C:\)
• cd \ moves to your PC’s root directory (likely C:\)
• echo Hello > XYZ.txt creates a plain text file called XYZ in the current directory containing the word “Hello”
• del XYZ.txt deletes the file XYZ.txt
• md XYZ creates a new subdirectory (i.e., folder) in the current directory
• rmdir XYZ deletes the directory XYZ

The path to some image file Cat.jpg on the Desktop of some User JohnDoe is: C:\Users\JohnDoe\Desktop\Cat.jpg.

MacOS (Terminal.app)

• ls returns the contents of the current directory (i.e., folder)
• cd XYZ changes from the current directory to the subdirectory XYZ
• cd .. moves to a directory one level up (toward the root directory /)
• cd / moves to your Mac’s root directory (i.e., /)
• touch XYZ.txt creates an empty plain text file called XYZ in the current directory
• rm XYZ.txt deletes the file XYZ.txt
• mkdir XYZ creates a new subdirectory (i.e., folder) in the current directory
• rm -R XYZ deletes the directory XYZ

The path to some image file Cat.jpg on the Desktop of some User JohnDoe is: /Users/JohnDoe/Desktop/Cat.jpg.