Basic Unix commands

It is impossible to cover all the Unix commands installed on our system in a document of this size; we strongly suggest that you check out one of the good introductory books on the subject in the Suggested Readings (section ). The list below is just a quick overview of some of the more common commands.

Command	Action
ls somedirectory	LiSt files in somedirectory
cd somedirectory	Change Directory to somedirectory
cp file1 file2	CoPy file1 to file2
mv file1 file2	MoVe file1 to file2
mv file directory	MoVe file into directory
rm file	ReMove or delete file
rmdir directory	ReMove DIRectory directory; it must be empty
less file	view contents of file a page at a time; an alternative to more
which	shows WHICH location a command is in
where	shows all places on the system in your PATH WHERE a command may be found
ps	shows all ProcesseS you are running
top	shows the TOP processes using the most CPU time