DIGITAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Command Line. Cheat Sheet

pwd  (print working directory) to show what folder you are in 
ls (list) to show the content of the folder
cd  to change directory 
cd ..  to go up one directory 
cd ~ gets you to your user folder, home
touch to update the time on a file, and create a new file if it doesn’t exist
mkdir - creates a new folder 
echo to print plain text 
> (redirect symbol) to print into a specific file  overwriting it, e.g.  echo “This is my cheat sheet”  > cheat-sheet.txt (creates a new file if it doesn’t exist)
>> (append) to add new file without overwriting, e.g. 
echo “append is used to print more text” >> cheat-sheet.txt
cat - prints the file 
| (pipe) allows to take the output of a command and use it as the input for the next command.
wc -word count 
sort  to organize the content of the file in alphabetically by line
mv – to move files 
control + C to interrupt the last command by stop running it
less to ge a paginated view of the data. To navigate this use: f for forward, b for back, q for quit - this is not “control + C” because ‘less’ waits for user input

head to only see the first part of the file, e.g. head nypl_items.csv
tail to only see the last part of the file, e.g. tail nypl_items.csv
uniq (stands for unique) to print repeat lines only once

grep stands for “global regular expression print’ 


FLAGS: marked with hyphens to indicate specifications to the commands
wc -w ask to print the number of words
sort -f to make sort non case sensitive
ls -l to show the long list (the details of the content)
wc -l to show the number of lines
wc -m to count the number of characters 
head -n # to show a specific number of lines of the head, e.g. head -n 1 nypl_items.csv 
tail-n # to show a specific number of lines of the head, e.g. tail -n 3 nypl_items.csv


TIPS
UP and DOWN arrows to navigate previous commands
tab for completion