How To...
HOW TO USE TERMINAL ON MAC
HOW
TO USE TERMINAL ON MAC.
Terminal
provides a command line interface to control the UNIX-based operating system
that lurks below macOS (or Mac OS X). Here's everything you need to know about
Terminal, and what it can do for you and your Mac.
What is terminal all about?
The first
thing to understand about Terminal is that it's just an application and it
lives in the Utilities folder in Applications. You launch it like any other and
when you do, you'll see Apple's implementation of a Unix command-line
environment, known as a shell. There are various types of shell; Apple uses one
called Bash.
The title
bar of a Terminal window displays the name of the current user, the type of
shell, and the size of the window in pixels. If you look at the command-line
inside the window, you'll see that each line starts with the name of the Mac
and is followed by the name of the current user. The 'cursor' is indicated by a
shaded box.
You can run
other shells with Terminal, but you'll have to install those yourself. Commands
in Unix are shell-specific, so it's important, say when you're following tips
written for a different flavour of Unix, that you use the right shell for the
commands, or vice versa.
How to use Terminal on a Mac
We're
getting ahead of ourselves, however. Using Terminal is straightforward: you
type a command on the command-line and press Return to execute it. A command
has three elements to it; the command itself, which calls a specific tool, an
option which modifies the command's output, and an argument, which calls the
resource on which the command will operate.
Often, the
argument takes the form of a specific file, in which case you need to type the
file path at the end of the command. There is a shortcut, however. If you
locate the file in the Finder, you can drag and drop it onto the Terminal
window and Terminal will extract its path and slot it into the command for you.
There are a
few rules that you need to bear in mind when using any command-line interface.
One of these is that every character, including spaces, matters. So if you copy
a command from a website, magazine or book, you need to make sure you type it
exactly as it's shown.
You can
rerun previous commands without retyping them by using the up arrow on the
keyboard to navigate to the command and then pressing Return. And you can
interrupt a command by pressing Control-C.
Commands
To see a
list of available commands, hold down the Escape key and then press Y when
asked if you want to display a specific number of possibilities. You'll see a
list of commands, with their meanings next to them. If you press spacebar more
commands will load. Press Q to exit and return to a command prompt.
Unix has its
own built-in manual and you can call it in Terminal to find out more
information about a command. To use it, type man [command], where 'command' is the name of the command on which
you want more information.
Locations
When you
type a command in Terminal, it's executed in your current location, unless you
specify otherwise. When you launch a new Terminal window, that location is at
the top level of your Home directory, so every command is relative to that
location.
To change
location, use cd followed
by the path of the location you want to move to. To return to the default, type cd ~/ and your location will
change from wherever you are to your Home directory. You can view a list of the
files and folders in your current location by typing ls (that's a lower-case LS) to
list them in Terminal.
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