Xavier Olive research teaching python blog til cli

A checklist for the command line interface

2 January 2022

A little checklist to estimate where you are with your command line abilities. This list is most likely a work in progress…

Survival skills

Do you

  • know how to list files
  • know how to change directory
  • know how to create a file, a directory, how to delete them
  • know about piping, basic tools grep, sed, awk, cut
  • understand permissions, change permissions
  • know the usual shortcuts for current, parent and home directory
  • know how to quit the vi/vim text editor
  • know how to print your current directory
  • know how to print your current username
  • know how to move files, how to copy files
  • understand completion

If this sounds difficult, most of this content is addressed here.

Basic skills

Do you

  • understand what a return code is
  • understand what a shebang #! is
  • know how to create and extract an archive
  • know which shell you are using
  • know about configuration files for your shell
  • know about environment variables
  • know about common folder names

  • know tools for basic tasks for editing text, image, video, PDF format
  • know about Git
  • know how to download data from a public server
  • know how to search for a file in your aborescence

Intermediate skills

Do you

  • know about checking integrity of files
  • know how to configure your terminal prompt