Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide

The Filesystem

If you think Macintosh files are just little icons on your desktop, it’s time to learn something new. When you access files from a command line rather than the Finder, things look pretty different.

Centuries ago, people believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system and everything revolved around it, even the sun. They believed this because they saw the sun move through the sky each day. But in reality, the sun is in the center, and Earth is merely one planet orbiting it.

The Macintosh desktop has a similar illusion. When you log in to the Mac, everything on the desktop seems to revolve around you: your files, your home folder, your trash, and your system preferences. It feels like you are in the center, surrounded by the rest of the Mac’s files, folders, and features. In reality, however, your desktop isn’t the center of anything: it’s just one “planet” (really a folder) in a solar system of files and folders, called the OS X filesystem, or just “the filesystem.”

In the following sections, we’ll introduce you to the true filesystem as viewed through the Terminal. This view might seem like an alien world because your familiar files and folders won’t have any icons, just words on a command line. Nevertheless, you must become comfortable with this view to take advantage of the Terminal’s powerful features. For some people, this is the most challenging aspect of getting started with the Terminal and shell.