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Abayomi Ogunnusi
Abayomi Ogunnusi

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Bash Terminal Guide

#bash #tutorial #programming #webdev

Good day, wonderful friends; today we'll be talking about the terminal, the dreaded black thing. Although the GUI is appealing to use, we must embrace the terminal as software engineers. We'll focus on Bash, which is also known as Bourne Again Shell. Let's take a swing at the Bash
bash

See this post as cheat sheet to using the terminal.
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click to download Git Bash.

TOC

🎯 Basic commands
🎯 Working with dates
🎯 Directories
🎯 Navigating the terminal
🎯 Working with files
🎯 Pagination
🎯 Copying files
🎯 Find commands
🎯 grep
🎯 More basic commands

Part2:

🥦 Vim : Introduction
🥦 Navigating around vim
🥦 Insert Mode
🥦 Saving
🥦 Delete, cut and paste
🥦 Saving and quitting
🥦 Saving file and still remaining in insert mode
🥦 Search and replace
🥦 Vim config

♣️ Conclusion
♣️ Reference

Basic command

🥦Clear screen

Ctrl + l
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🥦 Go to the start of a line

ctrl + a
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🥦 Go to the end of a line

ctrl + e
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🥦 Go back one word

alt + b
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🥦 Go front one word

alt + f
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🥦 Delete word backward

alt + backspace
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🥦 Word forward

alt + d
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Working with dates

📆 Get present date and time

date
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📆 Get calendar (NA)

cal
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📆 Get current user

whoami
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Manual section

📚 Get manual (NA)

man
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📚 Get manual help

man --help
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Directories

📂 Make a new directory

mkdir test
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📂 print working directories

pwd
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📂 List storage (folder or file content)

ls
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📂 Shows files within directory

ls -a
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📂 Shows all contents (read, write, execute)

ls -al
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Navigating the terminal

📂 Change directory

cd <folder name>
e.g cd Desktop/
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📂 Go back one folder up

cd ..
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Go back two folders

cd ../..
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Go to the previous folder

cd -
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📂 Go to the root folder

cd ~
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📂 Go back to the previous folder

cd -
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📂 Remove folder

rm -rf testfolder
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🎯 Steps to copy a folder into another

mkdir folder1
mkdir folder2
mv folder1 folder 2
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Explanation: The above command means move folder1 into folder2

📂 Move folder back to its former root

mv folder2/folder1 .
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Explanation: The above command means moving folder inside folder2 (i.e folder1) into the current directory .

📂 Make subdirectory

mkdir -p folder1/folder2/folder3
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Explanation: The above command means folder2 is created in folder 1 and folder 3 is created in folder2

🖋️ Renaming with the mv command

mv folder1 newfolder
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Explanation: The above command means rename folder1 into newfolder

Working with files

📔 Create a file

touch index.ts
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📔 Steps to move files into folder

mkdir testfolder
touch index.html
mv index.html testfolder
ls testfolder (to see the contents inside testfolder)
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🗑️ Remove all files (dangerous)

mkdir testfolder
cd testfolder
touch style-1.css
touch style-2.css
rm style-*.css

if you ls, the folder should be empty
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📔 Create multiple files at once

touch index.html main.js style.css
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Writing into files

📔 write

mkdir test
cd test
echo "hello world" > index.html
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📔 To read the file (see content inside)

mkdir test
cd test
echo "hello world" > index.html
cat index.html
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📔 Append to files

mkdir test
cd test
echo "jeeeeez you are so cool" >> index.html
cat > index.html
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Explanation: one > overrides while double >> appends.

Line breaks 

 echo "heloo" \n "hi there" \n "this is me" >> index.html
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🎯: \n adds a new line to the line statement

Pagination

This section is for paginating output using the less, Head, and Tail

less index.html
press spacebar to move to the next sets of lines
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🔖 See the first 10 lines

head index.html
press spacebar to move first 10 lines
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🔖 See the last 10 lines

tail index.html
press spacebar to move first 10 lines
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Copying files

To leave original intact

cp index.html index2.html
cat index2.html
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Explanation: This copies all internal content from index.html into index2.html

🖱️ Copy everything into a folder

mkdir newfolder
cp *.html folder3
ls newfolder
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🖱️ Copy folder

cp -r newfolder newfolder2
ls .
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Find Commands

🔎 find all files and folder inside a directory

find .
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🔎 Specific search query

find . -name index.txt
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🔎 Find by type

find . -type f -name index.txt  //the f means file
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find . -type d -name index.txt  //the d means directory
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🔎 Ignore case sensitive in search

find . -type d -iname index.txt
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🔎 Find all file type

find . -type d -iname "*.json"
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🔎 Find all empty file

find . -type f -empty
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🔎🗑️ Find and Delete

find . -type f -name index.js -delete
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grep

This is a global regular expression print that is used to locate text in files.

grep -r "hello" newfolder
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grep -rn "hello" newfolder // n is the line number
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Explanation: This means find the word hello in the directory called newfolder

grep -rni "put" .
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Explanation: means find the word put in recursive mode, show the line number and make it case insensitive. The dot here means current directory

More basic commands 

history  //This is a list of all the commands we've used since
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🎯 To re-execute any from the history.

!676
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🎯 Get the previous command

!!
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🎯 Search as you type

ctrl + r
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Let's take a short pause before diving into vim's features.
break

Now that you've returned, let's get started with this question. What exactly is vim❓


Vim, which stands for Vi Improved, is a popular open source text editor. It enables us to write quickly in our terminal. Other editors, such as nano, are available, but vim will be my primary focus.

Let us see what this tool is capable of. I will start by copying a raw file from GitHub using curl. The steps are giving below.
click raw
Image description

Copy the URL
Image description

🖥️ I will use curl to pull data from GitHub

Go to GitHub
click on raw files e.g test
Copy the link
Open terminal, here i am using <mark>Bash</mark>
run: curl -O <paste the URL here>
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💡 Then open the existing file with vim

vim Footer.test.tsx
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💡 Result:
Image description

💡 Open a new file in vim

vim test.js
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💡 To see the line mode inside the file

:set nu or set number
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💡 To enable syntax highlighting

:syntax on
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The command above opens vim in command mode.

🚫 Quit out of command mode

:q!
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Navigating around vim

🧘🏽‍♂️ To move words by words
h ⬅️ - go left
j ⬇️ - go down
k ⬆️ - go up
l ➡️ - go right

🔖 Move forward

w
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🔖 Move backward

w
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🔖 Go to the beginning of the line

0
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🔖 Go to the end of the line

$
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🔖 Go to the beginning of the line after white spacing

^
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🔖 Press g twice to go to the top of the code

gg
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🔖 Press G twice to go to the end of the code

G
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🔖 Go down the line by line

shift + ]
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🔖 Go up line by line

shift + [
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🔖 Go to a specific line number e.g line 1 press1 and gg

1gg
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Insert Mode (Vim) 

i
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Press ESC to switch to command mode.

📍Open vim and jump to the actual line number

vim +20 index.html
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📍 To undo

u
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📍 To redo

ctrl + r
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📍 To insert after the current line

o
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📍 Insert before the current line

shift + O (i.e Capital O)
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Saving

💾 Save changes after inserting

:w then :q!
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Explanation: w means write and q quits from insert mode

💾 To save and quit with one command

:wq
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i.e write and quit

Delete, cut, and paste

🗑️ Delete entire line

dd
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🗑️ Delete 4 lines

4dd
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🗑️ Delete word

dw
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🗑️ Delete everything

dG
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✂️ Cut and paste (Vim)

dd to cut
j to go down
p to paste
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🗑️ Delete to the beginning of the word

db ⬅️
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🗑️ Delete to the end of the word

➡️
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💾 Saving and quitting Vim 

:q!
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The above command means close file and abandons changes

:wq
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Explanation: The above command means save file and close the file
Write a command and press the Tab key or double-tap

💾Save the file and still remain in insert mode 

esc
:w
write a few more codes
:w
:q
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Search and replace

🔎 To search, you must be in the command mode

vim test.js
esc
/ <type words to search here>
enter
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🔎 Navigate to the next search result

n
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🔎 Return to the previous outcome.

shift + n or N
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Vim config 

cd ~
vim .vimrc
press i
:setnumber
:syntax on
press esc
:wq
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Consider this to be our vim config file, similar to eslint configuration file

Conclusion

This is a step-by-step guide to using the terminal. Remember, the goal isn't to memorize the entire command, but rather to use this post as a guide, and as you practice them in small chunks, they'll become second nature. Please feel free to comment on any commands that have been omitted or incorrectly stated. Also, explain how to use commands like 'man' and 'cal' that aren't available in the git bash shell. Warm regards

Reference

Amigos Code
Joe Collins

Top comments (8)

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev •

This is a really great post! Well done for putting this all together!

For anyone who wants to learn more about Bash scripting, I could suggest this open-source eBook here:

GitHub logo bobbyiliev / introduction-to-bash-scripting

Free Introduction to Bash Scripting eBook

💡 Introduction to Bash Scripting

This is an open-source introduction to Bash scripting guide/ebook that will help you learn the basics of Bash scripting and start writing awesome Bash scripts that will help you automate your daily SysOps, DevOps, and Dev tasks. No matter if you are a DevOps/SysOps engineer, developer, or just a Linux enthusiast, you can use Bash scripts to combine different Linux commands and automate boring and repetitive daily tasks, so that you can focus on more productive and fun things.

The guide is suitable for anyone working as a developer, system administrator, or a DevOps engineer and wants to learn the basics of Bash scripting.

🚀 Download

To download a copy of the ebook use one of the following links:

📘 Chapters

The first 13 chapters would be purely focused on getting some solid Bash scripting foundations then the rest of the…

View on GitHub
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michaelcurrin profile image
Michael Currin •

Some fixes for you.

  • mv folder1 folder 2 take out the space
  • heloo - typo
  • you have move back and forward both as w
  • using arrow keys is far more convenient in the shell for moving across words or jumping to start or end. Try ctrl or alt and left arrow
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kwadoskii profile image
Austin Ofor •

Thanks learnt some new commands
The vim editor is on another level.

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drsimplegraffiti profile image
Abayomi Ogunnusi •

@kwadoskii I'm delighted you found it useful.

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drsimplegraffiti profile image
Abayomi Ogunnusi •

@bobbyiliev thanks for the e-book

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drsimplegraffiti profile image
Abayomi Ogunnusi •

@michaelcurrin thanks for the observation. I will update

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drsimplegraffiti profile image
Abayomi Ogunnusi •

@aoayoola thanks for the contribution

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aoayoola profile image
Abayomi Ayoola • • Edited

Using wildcard to remove files, you could just use

rm *.css instead

For pagination, you could also use the more command. It output the content of the file page by page

more index.html

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