Translations by Wylmer Wang

The <command>touch</command> command is used either to change a file's access and modification timestamps or to create a new empty file. For example, <screen>touch foo</screen> will create a new empty file named <filename>foo</filename>. If <filename>foo</filename> is already a file, then using <command>touch</command> will update the timestamps on the file which will show the last time a file was <emphasis>touched</emphasis>.

<ulink url="http://linuxsurvival.com/index.php"/> - Java-based tutorials.

<ulink url="http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz"/> - a massive online book about system administration, almost all from the command line.

<ulink url="http://ss64.com/bash/"/> - an A-Z index of the Bash command line for Linux.

For more detailed tutorials on the Linux command line, please see:

Deletes the word before the cursor

Deletes the entire current line

<ulink url="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CommandlineHowto">Commandline Howto</ulink> - longer and more complete than this basic guide; still not finished however.

Moves the cursor to the <emphasis>end</emphasis> of the line

Deletes from the current cursor position to the end of the line

Moves the cursor to the <emphasis>start</emphasis> of the line

Executes the command selected

"Under Linux there are GUIs (graphical user interfaces), where you can point and click and drag, and hopefully get work done without first reading lots of documentation. The traditional Unix environment is a CLI (command line interface), where you type commands to tell the computer what to do. That is faster and more powerful, but requires finding out what the commands are." -- from <placeholder-1/>

This document provides a brief description of the Linux command line. It is not a complete guide to the command line, but rather an introduction to complement <phrase>Kubuntu</phrase>'s graphical tools.

This guide describes some basic GNU/Linux shell commands. It is not intended to be a complete guide to the command line, just an introduction to complement <phrase>Kubuntu</phrase>'s graphical tools.

All command names, file names or paths to directories will be shown using a <command>monospace font</command>.

<emphasis role="strong">Command Line Linux is case sensitive.</emphasis> User, user, and USER are each different and distinct in Linux.

@@image: 'help:/images/C/C/konsole.png'; md5=THIS FILE DOESN'T EXIST

Introduction To The Command Line

Credits and License

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu documentation team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam). For a list of contributors, see the <ulink url="help:/kubuntu/contributors.html">contributors page</ulink>

This document is made available under the Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.5 License (CC-BY-SA).

You are free to modify, extend, and improve the Ubuntu documentation source code under the terms of this license. All derivative works must be released under this license.

This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AS DESCRIBED IN THE DISCLAIMER.

A copy of the license is available here: <ulink url="help:/kubuntu/copyright.html">Creative Commons ShareAlike License</ulink>.

Ubuntu Documentation Project

Canonical Ltd. and members of the <placeholder-1/>

The Ubuntu Documentation Project

Introduction

man intro(1)

The commands should be issued from a command prompt within a <application>Terminal</application> and will be shown as: <screen>command to type</screen>

Starting A Terminal

File and Directory Commands

pwd - print working directory

cd - change directory

To navigate into the root directory, type: <screen>cd /</screen>

To navigate up one directory level, type: <screen>cd ..</screen>

ls - list files

Used with the <command>-l</command> option, <command>ls</command> outputs other information along with the filename, such as the permissions on the file, the file's owner, and more.

Used with the <command>-al</command> options, <command>ls</command> outputs the information associated with the <command>-l</command> option in addition to showing hidden files (<command>a</command> option).

touch - create empty file

mkdir - make directory

cp - copy files or directories

mv - move files or directories

rm - remove files or directories

System Information Commands

df - display amount of disk space

free - display amount of free and used memory

top - display top consuming processes

uname - print details about the current machine