Using the Terminal
The first order of business when exploring a new flavor of Unix is to find the command prompt. In Mac OS X, you won’t find the command prompt in the Dock or on a Finder menu. The Terminal application is instead located in the /Applications/Utilities directory. Don’t open it just yet, though. First, drag the Terminal’s application icon to the Dock so you’ll have quick access to it when you need to use the Terminal. To launch the Terminal, click its icon in the Dock once, or double-click on its icon in the Finder view.
Tip
The full path to the Terminal is /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app, although the Finder hides the .app extension. Terminal.app is not a binary file. Instead, it’s a Mac OS X package, which contains a collection of files, including the binary and support files. You can Control-click (or right-click) on the Terminal in the Finder and select Show Package Contents to see what’s inside.
After the Terminal starts, you’ll be greeted by the banner message from /etc/motd and a tcsh prompt, as shown in Figure 1-1.
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