Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Working with Files and Directories

The previous pages show you how to navigate your directories using Unix commands. Just perusing your directories isn’t particularly productive, however. Fortunately, this section shows you how to do something with the files you see listed: how to copy, move, create, and delete directories and files.

Note

You’re entering Serious Power territory, where it’s theoretically possible to delete a whole directory of stuff with a single typo. As a precaution, consider working through this section with administrator privileges turned off for your account, so that you won’t be able to change anything outside your home directory.

To do so, quit Terminal. Open the Accounts pane of System Preferences. Select your account name, click Edit, enter your password in the Current Password box, and press Enter. Turn off the “Allow user to administer this machine” checkbox. Finally, click OK. (One Mac OS X account, on the other hand, must always have administrator privileges, so you first may need to create another Administrator account, as described in Section 11.2.)

cp (copy)

Using the Unix command cp, you can copy and rename a file in one move. (Try that in the Finder!)

The basic command goes like this: cp path1 path2, where the path placeholders represent the original file and the copy, respectively.

Copying in place

To duplicate a file called Thesis.doc, you would type cp Thesis.doc Thesis2.doc. (That’s just a space between the names.) You don’t have to call the copy ...