Terminal Toolbox

Prints the absolute path of your current working directory. Your first move whenever you're unsure where you are.

Lists the contents of the current directory (or a directory you specify).

Lists contents in "long" format — permissions, owner, size, and modification date — with file sizes shown in human-readable units (K, M, G) rather than raw bytes.

Changes your current working directory. cd .. moves up one level; cd with no argument returns you to your home directory; cd - returns you to the previous directory you were in.

Creates a new, empty directory. mkdir -p a/b/c creates nested directories in one go, including any missing parent directories.

Copies a file (or, with -r, a directory and its contents) to a new location, leaving the original in place.

Moves or renames a file or directory. There is no separate "rename" command — moving a file to a new name in the same directory is how renaming works.

Deletes a file permanently — there is no undo and no recycle bin. Use rm -r to remove a directory and its contents. Always double-check the path before pressing enter.

Prints the first lines of a file (10 by default). Use head -n 20 file to control how many lines are shown. Safe to use on huge files since it only reads the start.

Opens a file for interactive, scrollable viewing without loading the whole thing into memory at once. Arrow keys / space bar to scroll, /pattern to search, q to quit.

Prints an entire file's contents to the screen. Useful for small files; avoid on very large files since it will flood your terminal.

Inspects a file's actual content to report its real type (e.g. "gzip compressed data", "ASCII text"), regardless of what its extension claims.

Reports disk usage. du -sh . summarises the total size of the current directory in human-readable units — far more useful day-to-day than the default verbose, per-file output.

gzip file compresses file into file.gz (and removes the original by default). gunzip file.gz reverses this. Add -k to either command to keep the original file as well as the new one.