A guide to command line

Whether you are just starting off on your journey as a coder or are an experienced professional, this guide will help you understand the basic important commands in CMD to start with and always aid as a cheat-sheet anytime you want to revise! :)

So, what is command line?

In simple words, it’s a way to communicate with your computer, but instead of the mouse or touchscreen (in some), we use ‘commands’.

Today let’s cover a few important commands here, like:

cal, cd, cp, date, df, file, free, help, less, ls, mkdir, mv, pwd, rm, unzip, wget, 

Lets get right into it.

1. $ cal
   displays the calendar of the current month.
2. $ cd
   helps you change directory.
3. $ cp
   * $ cp <itemOne> <itemTwo> copies file/directory ‘itemOne’ to file/directory ‘itemTwo’.
   * $ cp fileOne fileTwo directoryOnecopies ‘fileOne’ and ‘fileTwo’ into ‘directoryOne’.
   $ cp directoryOne/* directoryTwocopies all files from ‘directoryOne’ into ‘directoryTwo’.
   $ cp -r directoryOne directoryTwocopies the content of ‘directoryOne’ into ‘directoryTwo’.
4. $ date
   displays the current date and time.
5. $ df
   helps you check the current amount of free disk space on our drive.
6. $ file <fileName>
   helps you check the file type.
7. $ free
   helps you check the amount of free memory.
8. $ help
   use this command when you’re not sure of which command you want to use or when you want to review the information about shell built-in commands.
9. $ less <fileOne>
   displayes content of ‘fileOne’.
10. $ ls list files.
11. $ mkdir
    *$ mkdir <directoryName> create directory by the name ‘directoryName’.
    *$ mkdir <directoryOne> <directoryTwo> <directoryThree>create multiple files.
12. $ mv
    *$ mv <itemOne> <itemTwo> helps move and rename a file.
    *$ mv fileOne fileTwo Move ‘fileOne’ to ‘fileTwo’.
    Note: If ‘fileOne’ exists, it is overwritten with the content of fileOne, if not, fileTwo is created.
    *$ mv fileOne fileTwo directoryOneMove ‘fileOne’ and ‘fileTwo’ into ‘directoryOne’.
    Note: ‘directoryOne’ must already be an existing directory.
    *$ mv directoryOne directoryTwoMove ‘directoryOne’ and it’s content into ‘directoryTwo’.
    Note: If ‘directoryTwo’ does not exist, it is created, the content is moved to ‘directoryTwo’, and ‘directoryOne’ is deleted.
13. $ pwd
    ‘print working directory’ / displays your working directory.
14. $ rm
    *$ rm <itemOne> removes/deletes itemOne.
    IMPORTANT: Once you delete something with rm, it’s gone!
    *$ rm -r directoryOnedeletes ‘directoryOne’ and it’s content(s).
    *$ rm -r fileOne directoryOne deletes ‘fileOne’ and ‘directoryOne’ and it’s content(s).
15. $ unzip command to unzip a file.
16. $ wget <location>command-line program for file downloading.

Thank you for reading.

Happy coding!