Basic UNIX commands

Note: not all of these are actually part of UNIX itself, and you may not find them on all UNIX machines. But they can all be used on turing in essentially the same way, by typing the command and hitting return. Note that some of these commands are different on non-Solaris machines - see SunOS differences.
If you've made a typo, the easiest thing to do is hit CTRL-u to cancel the whole line. But you can also edit the command line (see the guide to More UNIX).
UNIX is case-sensitive.

Files

Directories

Directories, like folders on a Macintosh, are used to group files together in a hierarchical structure.

Finding things

About other people

About your (electronic) self

Connecting to the outside world

Miscellaneous tools

You can find out more about these commands by looking up their manpages:
man commandname --- shows you the manual page for the command

For further ways of obtaining help, look at the pages with electronic sources of information and non-electronic sources.

More UNIX commands


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