Navigating Files and Directories - Part 1

Overview

Teaching: 15 min
Exercises: 5 min

Questions

• How can I move around on my computer?

• How can I see what files and directories I have?

• How can I specify the location of a file or directory on my computer?

Objectives

• Explain the similarities and differences between a file and a directory.

• Translate an absolute path into a relative path and vice versa.

• Construct absolute and relative paths that identify specific files and directories.

• Use options and arguments to change the behaviour of a shell command

• Demonstrate the use of tab completion, and explain its advantages.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMH8s0eChDg

The part of the operating system responsible for managing files and directories is called the file system. It organizes our data into files, which hold information, and directories (also called ‘folders’), which hold files or other directories.

Several commands are frequently used to create, inspect, rename, and delete files and directories. To start exploring them, we’ll go to our open shell window.

First let’s find out where we are by running a command called pwd (which stands for ‘print working directory’). Directories are like places - at any time while we are using the shell we are in exactly one place, called our current working directory. Commands mostly read and write files in the current working directory, i.e. ‘here’, so knowing where you are before running a command is important. pwd shows you where you are:

$ pwd

/Users/nelle

Here, the computer’s response is /Users/nelle, which is Nelle’s home directory:

Home Directory Variation

The home directory path will look different on different operating systems. On Linux it may look like /home/nelle, and on Windows it will be similar to C:\Documents and Settings\nelle or C:\Users\nelle. (Note that it may look slightly different for different versions of Windows.) In future examples, we’ve used Mac output as the default - Linux and Windows output may differ slightly, but should be generally similar.

To understand what a ‘home directory’ is, let’s have a look at how the file system as a whole is organized. For the sake of this example, we’ll be illustrating the filesystem on our scientist Nelle’s computer. After this illustration, you’ll be learning commands to explore your own filesystem, which will be constructed in a similar way, but not be exactly identical.

On Nelle’s computer, the filesystem looks like this:

At the top is the root directory that holds everything else. We refer to it using a slash character, /, on its own; this is the leading slash in /Users/nelle.

Inside that directory are several other directories: bin (which is where some built-in programs are stored), data (for miscellaneous data files), Users (where users’ personal directories are located), tmp (for temporary files that don’t need to be stored long-term), and so on.

We know that our current working directory /Users/nelle is stored inside /Users because /Users is the first part of its name. Similarly, we know that /Users is stored inside the root directory / because its name begins with /.

Slashes

Notice that there are two meanings for the / character. When it appears at the front of a file or directory name, it refers to the root directory. When it appears inside a path, it’s just a separator.

Underneath /Users, we find one directory for each user with an account on Nelle’s machine, her colleagues imhotep and larry.

The user imhotep’s files are stored in /Users/imhotep, user larry’s in /Users/larry, and Nelle’s in /Users/nelle. Because Nelle is the user in our examples here, this is why we get /Users/nelle as our home directory. Typically, when you open a new command prompt you will be in your home directory to start.

Now let’s learn the command that will let us see the contents of our own filesystem. We can see what’s in our home directory by running ls, which stands for ‘listing’:

$ ls

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

(Again, your results may be slightly different depending on your operating system and how you have customized your filesystem.)

ls prints the names of the files and directories in the current directory. We can make its output more comprehensible by using the -F option (also known as a switch or a flag) , which tells ls to classify the output by adding a marker to file and directory names to indicate what they are:

• a trailing / indicates that this is a directory
• @ indicates a link
• * indicates an executable

Depending on your default options, the shell might also use colors to indicate whether each entry is a file or directory.

$ ls -F

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

Here, we can see that our home directory contains only sub-directories. Any names in your output that don’t have a classification symbol, are plain old files.

General syntax of a shell command

Consider the command below as a general example of a command, which we will dissect into its component parts:

$ ls -F /

ls is the command, with an option -F and an argument /. We’ve already encountered options (also called switches or flags) which either start with a single dash (-) or two dashes (--), and they change the behaviour of a command. Arguments tell the command what to operate on (e.g. files and directories). Sometimes options and arguments are referred to as parameters. A command can be called with more than one option and more than one argument: but a command doesn’t always require an argument or an option.

Each part is separated by spaces: if you omit the space between ls and -F the shell will look for a command called ls-F, which doesn’t exist. Also, capitalization can be important. For example, ls -s will display the size of files and directories alongside the names, while ls -S will sort the files and directories by size, as shown below:

$ ls -s Desktop/data-shell/data
total 116
 4 amino-acids.txt   4 animals.txt   4 morse.txt  12 planets.txt  76 sunspot.txt
 4 animal-counts     4 elements      4 pdb         4 salmon.txt
$ ls -S Desktop/data-shell/data
sunspot.txt  animal-counts  pdb        amino-acids.txt  salmon.txt
planets.txt  elements       morse.txt  animals.txt

Putting all that together, our command above gives us a listing of files and directories in the root directory /. An example of the output you might get from the above command is given below:

$ ls -F /

Applications/         System/
Library/              Users/
Network/              Volumes/

Getting help

ls has lots of other options. There are two common ways to find out how to use a command and what options it accepts:

1. We can pass a --help option to the command, such as:

    $ ls --help
   

2. We can read its manual with man, such as:

    $ man ls
   

Depending on your environment you might find that only one of these works (either man or --help). We’ll describe both ways below.

The --help option

Many bash commands, and programs that people have written that can be run from within bash, support a --help option to display more information on how to use the command or program.

$ ls --help

Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
  -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
  -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
      --author               with -l, print the author of each file
  -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
      --block-size=SIZE      scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g.,
                               '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of
                               1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
  -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
  -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                               modification of file status information);
                               with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
  -C                         list entries by columns
      --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                               if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
  -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
  -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
  -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
  -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
      --file-type            likewise, except do not append '*'
      --format=WORD          across -x, commas -m, horizontal -x, long -l,
                               single-column -1, verbose -l, vertical -C
      --full-time            like -l --time-style=full-iso
  -g                         like -l, but do not list owner
      --group-directories-first
                             group directories before files;
                               can be augmented with a --sort option, but any
                               use of --sort=none (-U) disables grouping
  -G, --no-group             in a long listing, don't print group names
  -h, --human-readable       with -l and/or -s, print human readable sizes
                               (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)
      --si                   likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024
  -H, --dereference-command-line
                             follow symbolic links listed on the command line
      --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir
                             follow each command line symbolic link
                               that points to a directory
      --hide=PATTERN         do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN
                               (overridden by -a or -A)
      --indicator-style=WORD  append indicator with style WORD to entry names:
                               none (default), slash (-p),
                               file-type (--file-type), classify (-F)
  -i, --inode                print the index number of each file
  -I, --ignore=PATTERN       do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN
  -k, --kibibytes            default to 1024-byte blocks for disk usage
  -l                         use a long listing format
  -L, --dereference          when showing file information for a symbolic
                               link, show information for the file the link
                               references rather than for the link itself
  -m                         fill width with a comma separated list of entries
  -n, --numeric-uid-gid      like -l, but list numeric user and group IDs
  -N, --literal              print raw entry names (don't treat e.g. control
                               characters specially)
  -o                         like -l, but do not list group information
  -p, --indicator-style=slash
                             append / indicator to directories
  -q, --hide-control-chars   print ? instead of nongraphic characters
      --show-control-chars   show nongraphic characters as-is (the default,
                               unless program is 'ls' and output is a terminal)
  -Q, --quote-name           enclose entry names in double quotes
      --quoting-style=WORD   use quoting style WORD for entry names:
                               literal, locale, shell, shell-always,
                               shell-escape, shell-escape-always, c, escape
  -r, --reverse              reverse order while sorting
  -R, --recursive            list subdirectories recursively
  -s, --size                 print the allocated size of each file, in blocks
  -S                         sort by file size, largest first
      --sort=WORD            sort by WORD instead of name: none (-U), size (-S),
                               time (-t), version (-v), extension (-X)
      --time=WORD            with -l, show time as WORD instead of default
                               modification time: atime or access or use (-u);
                               ctime or status (-c); also use specified time
                               as sort key if --sort=time (newest first)
      --time-style=STYLE     with -l, show times using style STYLE:
                               full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, or +FORMAT;
                               FORMAT is interpreted like in 'date'; if FORMAT
                               is FORMAT1<newline>FORMAT2, then FORMAT1 applies
                               to non-recent files and FORMAT2 to recent files;
                               if STYLE is prefixed with 'posix-', STYLE
                               takes effect only outside the POSIX locale
  -t                         sort by modification time, newest first
  -T, --tabsize=COLS         assume tab stops at each COLS instead of 8
  -u                         with -lt: sort by, and show, access time;
                               with -l: show access time and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by access time, newest first
  -U                         do not sort; list entries in directory order
  -v                         natural sort of (version) numbers within text
  -w, --width=COLS           set output width to COLS.  0 means no limit
  -x                         list entries by lines instead of by columns
  -X                         sort alphabetically by entry extension
  -Z, --context              print any security context of each file
  -1                         list one file per line.  Avoid '\n' with -q or -b
      --help     display this help and exit
      --version  output version information and exit

The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K is 10*1024).
Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y (powers of 1024) or KB,MB,... (powers of 1000).

Using color to distinguish file types is disabled both by default and
with --color=never.  With --color=auto, ls emits color codes only when
standard output is connected to a terminal.  The LS_COLORS environment
variable can change the settings.  Use the dircolors command to set it.

Exit status:
 0  if OK,
 1  if minor problems (e.g., cannot access subdirectory),
 2  if serious trouble (e.g., cannot access command-line argument).

GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ls>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) ls invocation'

Unsupported command-line options

If you try to use an option (flag) that is not supported, ls and other commands will usually print an error message similar to:

$ ls -j

ls: invalid option -- 'j'
Try 'ls --help' for more information.

The man command

The other way to learn about ls is to type

$ man ls

This will turn your terminal into a page with a description of the ls command and its options and, if you’re lucky, some examples of how to use it.

To navigate through the man pages, you may use ↑ and ↓ to move line-by-line, or try B and Spacebar to skip up and down by a full page. To search for a character or word in the man pages, use / followed by the character or word you are searching for. Sometimes a search will result in multiple hits. If so, you can move between hits using N (for moving forward) and Shift+N (for moving backward).

To quit the man pages, press Q.

Manual pages on the web

Of course there is a third way to access help for commands: searching the internet via your web browser. When using internet search, including the phrase unix man page in your search query will help to find relevant results.

GNU provides links to its manuals including the core GNU utilities, which covers many commands introduced within this lesson.

Exploring More ls Flags

You can also use two options at the same time. What does the command ls do when used with the -l option? What about if you use both the -l and the -h option?

Some of its output is about properties that we do not cover in this lesson (such as file permissions and ownership), but the rest should be useful nevertheless.

Solution

The -l option makes ls use a long listing format, showing not only the file/directory names but also additional information such as the file size and the time of its last modification. If you use both the -h option and the -l option, this makes the file size ‘human readable’, i.e. displaying something like 5.3K instead of 5369.

Listing in Reverse Chronological Order

By default ls lists the contents of a directory in alphabetical order by name. The command ls -t lists items by time of last change instead of alphabetically. The command ls -r lists the contents of a directory in reverse order. Which file is displayed last when you combine the -t and -r flags? Hint: You may need to use the -l flag to see the last changed dates.

Solution

The most recently changed file is listed last when using -rt. This can be very useful for finding your most recent edits or checking to see if a new output file was written.

Key Points

• The file system is responsible for managing information on the disk.

• Information is stored in files, which are stored in directories (folders).

• Directories can also store other directories, which forms a directory tree.

• cd path changes the current working directory.

• ls path prints a listing of a specific file or directory; ls on its own lists the current working directory.

• pwd prints the user’s current working directory.

• / on its own is the root directory of the whole file system.

• A relative path specifies a location starting from the current location.

• An absolute path specifies a location from the root of the file system.

• Directory names in a path are separated with / on Unix, but \ on Windows.

• .. means ‘the directory above the current one’; . on its own means ‘the current directory’.