Mac OS X Pocket Guide, Second Edition

Basic Unix Commands

If you’ve never used Unix before, this section will serve as a quick introduction to issuing Unix commands from the Terminal. Experienced Unix users can skip over this section. For each of the following, you will need to be using the Terminal application. The commands you need to type are shown in bold.

View a command’s description and its options?

All the Unix commands on your system have a manual page (or manpage for short). To view the manpage for any command, you use the man command:

[macchuck:~] chuck% man pwd

The instructions for using the pwd command (described next) are then displayed one screen at a time. If there is more than one screen for a command’s description, you will see a percentage at the lower-left corner of the Terminal window telling you how much of the manpage has been viewed. To scroll to the next screen, hit the spacebar; you will be returned to the command prompt when you’ve reached the end of the manpage. The man command even has its own manpage, which can be viewed by using:

[macchuck:~] chuck% man man

Where am I?

Type pwd on the command line, and hit Return; this will tell you the present working directory.

[macchuck:~] chuck% pwd
/Users/chuck
[macchuck:~] chuck%

The default tcsh command prompt will show you what directory you’re in, but only to a point; for example:

[macchuck:Applications/Extras/Bluetooth] chuck% pwd
/Developer/Applications/Extras/Bluetooth
[macchuck:Applications/Extras/Bluetooth] chuck%

As this example shows, at first ...