Unix Commands
All Linux/UNIX commands work in the same basic way. You type a command name and a file name. The command does whatever it is designed to do to the file. Sometimes options can be used with commands in order to tell them to be "more specific" or do things they normally don't do. These options are called dash options in Linux because they are preceded by a hyphen (-), or dash.
The standard format of most commands is:
eos% commandname -options file_location file_destination
Note: The second path is usually only used with commands needing both source and destination.
Another thing to be aware of is that all commands are case sensitive. Thus, COMMANDname and commandname are entirely different things. Commandname and commandname are even completely different, as far as Linux/UNIX is concerned. Make sure to use the correct case when typing commands and filenames.
Overview of Commands
When dealing with these commands, there are a few questions you should ask yourself:
- What am I doing?
- How do I do that?
- What are the pathnames?
