LECTURE 2

Copying Files and Directories (cp)

cp file1 file2 is the command which makes a copy of file1 in the current working
directory and calls it file2.

What we are going to do now is to take a file stored in an open access area of the
file system, and use the cp command to copy it to your unixstuff directory.

First, change to your unixstuff directory.

cd ~/unixstuff

Then at the shell prompt type:

cp /cm/shared/training/tutorial/[Link] .

Don't forget the dot (.) at the end. Remember, in UNIX, the dot means the current
directory. The above command means copy the file [Link] to the current
directory, keeping the name the same.

Directories can also be copied with the cp command, but it’s necessary to add the
option –R to do so. This option means ‘recursive’ and will copy the contents of the
directory as well as the directory itself, for example:

cp -R directory1 directory2

Try running

cp -R /cm/shared/training/tutorial ~/unixstuff

Exercise 2a

Create a backup of your [Link] file by copying it to a file called [Link]

Moving files and Directories (mv)

The move command has a variety of similar but subtly different uses. It can be used
to move a file to a different location (i.e. a different directory). It can also be used to
move multiple files to a different directory. It can also be used to rename a file or a
directory. For example:

mv file1 directory1/

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 This would move file1 from the current directory into directory1.

mv file1 file2 file3 directory1/

This would move file1, file2 and file3 from the current directory into directory1.

mv file1 file2

This would rename file1 as file2.

mv directory1/ directory2/

This would rename a directory. Finally,

what will this do? mv file1 directory/file2

This would move and rename a file in one step.

We are now going to move the file [Link] to your backup directory. First,
change directories to your unixstuff directory (can you remember how?). Then, inside
the unixstuff directory, type

mv [Link] backups/

To see if it worked type

ls

ls backups

Removing Files (rm) and Directories (rmdir)

To delete (remove) a file, use the rm command. As an example, we are going to
create a copy of the [Link] file then delete it.

Inside your unixstuff directory, type

cp [Link] [Link]
ls
rm [Link]
ls

In order to delete an empty directory you can use the command

rmdir directory

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However this won't remove directories that already have files in them, instead you
can use

rm -r directory
to recursively delete files in directory (use sparingly - there is no Recycle bin!)

You can use the rmdir command to remove a directory (make sure it is empty first).
Try to remove the backups directory. You will not be able to since Linux will not let
you remove a non-empty directory.

Exercise 2b

Create a directory called tempstuff using mkdir, then remove it using the rmdir
command.

Displaying the contents of a file on the screen

clear (clear screen)

Before you start the next section, you may like to clear the terminal window of the
previous commands so the output of the following commands can be clearly
understood.

At the prompt, type

clear

This will clear all text and leave you with the prompt at the top of the window.

cat (concatenate)

The command cat can be used to display the contents of a file on the screen. Type:

cat [Link]

As you can see, the file is longer than than the size of the window, so it scrolls past
making it unreadable.

less

The command less writes the contents of a file onto the screen a page at a time. Type

less [Link]

Press the space bar if you want to see another page, type q if you want to quit reading.
As you can see, less is used in preference to cat for long files.

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head

The head command writes the first ten lines of a file to the screen. First clear the
screen then type

head [Link]

Then type

head -5 [Link]

What difference did the -5 do to the head command?

tail

The tail command writes the last ten lines of a file to the screen. Clear the screen
and type

tail [Link]

How can you view the last 15 lines of the file?

Searching the contents of a file

Simple searching using less

Using less, you can search though a text file for a keyword (pattern). For example, to
search through [Link] for the word 'science', type

less [Link]

then, still in less (i.e. don't press q to quit), type a forward slash (/) followed by the
word to search for, e.g.

/science

As you can see, less finds and highlights the keyword. Type n to search for the next
occurrence of the word.

grep

grep is one of many standard UNIX utilities. It searches files for specified words or
patterns. First clear the screen, then type

grep science [Link]

University of Leicester | Tutorial Two 9

As you can see, grep has printed out each line that contains the word science. Or
has it?

Try typing

grep Science [Link]

The grep command is case sensitive; it distinguishes between Science and science.

To ignore upper/lower case distinctions, use the -i option, i.e. type

grep -i science [Link]

Often when there is a lot of text it is useful to highlight the matches (this is a default
setting on ALICE / SPECTRE now but may not be on other systems)

grep --color -i science [Link]

To search for a phrase or pattern, you must enclose it in single quotes (the
apostrophe symbol). For example to search for the phrase spinning top, type

grep -i 'spinning top' [Link]

Some of the other options of grep are:

-v display those lines that do NOT match

-n precede each matching line with the line number
-c print only the total count of matched lines

Try some of them and see the different results. Don't forget, you can use more than
one option at a time, for example, the number of lines without the words science or
Science is

grep -ivc science [Link]

wc (word count)

A handy little utility is the wc command, short for word count. To do a word count on
[Link], type

wc -w [Link]

To find out how many lines the file has, type

wc -l [Link]

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To find out how many characters the file has, type

wc -m [Link]

Summary
cp file1 file2 copy file1 and call it file2
mv file1 file2 move or rename file1 to file2
rm file remove a file
rmdir directory remove a directory
cat file Display or concatenate a file
less file display a file a page at a time
head file display the first few lines of a file
tail file display the last few lines of a file
grep 'keyword' file search a file for keywords
wc file count number of lines/words/characters in file