An Introduction to Using the Command Line

Interface (CLI) to Work with Files and Directories

Mac OS
by bertram lyons
senior consultant
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Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

Introduction Every computer operating system has a different mechanism for communicating commands.
Windows is the well known operating system for Microsoft machines; MAC OS is the Apple
operating system, which itself is similar to UNIX/LINUX and other ?NIX operating systems. Each
system requires a different syntax to communicate commands, although mostly all operating
systems allow the same functions to be performed, even if the syntax differs.

In this demonstration, I’ll be focusing on how to work with command line on your MAC OS, but
it actually can be applied to most UNIX/LINUX interfaces as well. If you work on a PC, you can
search online for the analogous MS DOS commands and attempt to use them in the MS DOS
command prompt.

Using the MAC OS Open Terminal

Terminal Interface The Terminal is a program included with all versions of Mac OS X. It is located in the Utilities
folder within the Applications folder. When launched, it provides a command line interface (CLI)
to control the underpinnings of the UNIX based operating system.

A Few Basics
When the Terminal is first opened, a message similar to the following appears:

Last login: Fri Aug 29 14:49:37 on ttys000

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$

Line 1 shows the last time the Terminal was used. If the date or last connection is unfamiliar, it
could indicate someone has unwanted access to your computer.

Line 2 is the prompt, or command prompt. It shows the machine name (Bertrams-MacBook-Air),
a colon, the present working directory (~) a space, the current user (bertramlyons) and a dollar
sign (or a hash (#) if the shell has super user privileges).

The Current Directory

The current directory, also known as the working directory, is where you are. In the Finder, this
is equivalent to having a window open and viewing the files. To determine the current directory,
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Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

type pwd after the prompt, which produces an output similar to this:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons

pwd stands for “print working directory”, and will likely output “/Users/(yourusername)” if you
enter it upon first opening Terminal.

You may also notice that the current directory is displayed in a different form in the prompt. In
this case, “~” is equivalent to “/Users/bertramlyons”, the home folder.

Listing the Current Directory

To see what is contained in the current directory, you can use a list command (ls) with additional
options, -a (all files and directories, including hidden), -l (output as a true structured list), -R (list
recursively through all directories and files within the current directory). For example, the generic
ls command yields a columnar list of directories and files:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ ls
Applications Movies bert
Creative Cloud Files Music bin
Desktop Pictures index.html
Documents Public social-feed-manager
Downloads Tresors test1.txt
Library bagger websites
Adding the -l option to the ls command will give you more structured output (with more
information, too):

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ ls -l
total 72
drwx------ 3 bertramlyons staff 102 Apr 9 14:06 Applications
drwx------@ 3 bertramlyons staff 102 Jun 26 08:03 Creative
Cloud Files
drwxr-xr-x+ 25 bertramlyons staff 850 Sep 2 09:41 Desktop
drwx------+ 7 bertramlyons staff 238 Aug 23 23:41 Documents
drwx------+ 55 bertramlyons staff 1870 Sep 2 09:26 Downloads
drwx------@ 55 bertramlyons staff 1870 Jun 6 08:11 Library
drwx------+ 5 bertramlyons staff 170 Jul 16 10:25 Movies
drwx------+ 5 bertramlyons staff 170 Feb 21 2014 Music
drwx------+ 7 bertramlyons staff 238 Aug 23 23:41 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 bertramlyons staff 204 May 6 21:17 Public
drwx------@ 5 bertramlyons staff 170 Aug 22 15:02 Tresors
drwxr-xr-x 6 bertramlyons staff 204 May 7 15:11 bagger
drwxr-xr-x 2 bertramlyons staff 68 Jun 4 10:48 bert
drwxr-xr-x 17 bertramlyons staff 578 May 11 23:02 bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 bertramlyons staff 14500 Apr 28 13:22 index.html
drwxr-xr-x 9 bertramlyons staff 306 May 11 23:04 social-feed-
manager
-rw-r--r-- 1 bertramlyons staff 18696 Apr 28 09:13 test1.txt
drwxr-xr-x 4 bertramlyons staff 136 May 6 21:17 websites
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Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

Here you can see the permissions settings for each file/directory in the first column on the left.
“drwxrwxrwx” is the most you’ll see. The “d” identifies the object as a directory. If there is a “-”
where the “d” is supposed to be, that identifies the object as a file. Following the first character,
there is the potential for three sets of the characters “rwx”. On file systems there are three types
of users who can be assigned permissions: Owner, Group, EveryoneElse. Each trio of “rwx”
characters represents one of the three entities above, in the same respective order. Also, three
types of permissions can be documented for a given file/directory: Read, Write, Execute (rwx).

So, for each file directory, the permissions documentation tells you:
• If it is it a file or directory
• Whether the owner can read, write, and/or execute
• Whether the people in a certain group can read, write, and/or execute
• Whether everyone else who comes into contact with it can read, write, and/or execute

In the ls -l results you can also see things such as the owner (bertramlyons), the group that the
file is part of (staff), the filesize, and the date last modified.

Adding the -a or -R option to the ls command will give you much more; -a reveals any hidden
files, -R reads recursively through all directories. Try it for yourself.

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ ls -a -l -R

The ls command has many, many options, and is worth learning. For example, ls -F will postfix a
slash (/) on every directory and an asterisk (*) on every executable file.

Changing Directories
Now that you can see what is in your current directory, you may decide to navigate to a different
directory. To change the current directory, use the cd command, as in:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ cd Documents

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Documents bertramlyons$ pwd
/Users/bertramlyons/Documents

You are now in your Documents directory, just as if you had double clicked on the Documents
folder in the Finder. Note how the prompt has changed to include the path “~/Documents”.
Remember, you can get a list of all the documents in this directory with the ls (list) command:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Documents bertramlyons$ ls -l
total 11136
-rw-r--r-- 1 bertramlyons staff 5698278 Mar 18 12:56 FileZilla_3.7.4.1_
i686-apple-darwin9.app.tar.bz2
drwxr-xr-x 6 bertramlyons staff 204 Jun 6 12:55 Microsoft User Data
drwxr-xr-x 2 bertramlyons staff 68 Jan 14 2014 WebEx

There are two directories and one file in my Documents folder.

Using the cd command has many options and shortcuts. The example above uses the cd
command to move into a directory that is within the current working directory. That is why we
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Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

could type: cd Documents. The system looked for a directory in the current working directory
named Documents. You can also use global paths to change to any directory in the file system.
For example, I may want to change directly to a directory on my desktop called desktop:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ cd /Users/bertramlyons/

Desktop/desktop
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:desktop bertramlyons$ pwd
/Users/bertramlyons/Desktop/desktop

By typing in the global path, I was able to move directly to the desired directory.

There are shortcuts that you can use as well in combination with cd:

• “cd ~” will always take you directly to your home folder (for a given user)
• “cd ..” will always take you up a step in the hierarchy (or back a step) of the root file
structure

Give it a try. You can always use pwd to see where you are.

Directory Management
You can use the CLI to create and delete directories just as you would use the Finder on
your computer. The words ‘directory’ and ‘folder’ are often used interchangeably to identify
organizational structures in a file system. You can place other directories or files within a
directory. The command used in this case is called mkdir.

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ mkdir TestDirectory

This command creates a new directory on my Desktop called “TestDirectory.” The mkdir
command by default creates a directory at the current working directory. Be sure you know
where you are currently if you intend to create a directory without providing a global path. If I
want to create a directory at a very specific location, then it is best to use the entire path in your
mkdir command:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ mkdir /Users/bertramlyons/Desktop/

TestDirectory2

These two commands both produced new directories on my Desktop with the specified names:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons/Desktop
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ ls
TestDirectory
TestDirectory2

Now you may also want to delete a directory from your filesystem. Anytime you talk about
deleting in your CLI, things get a little scary. Don’t be afraid, just learn to be very careful about
using delete commands. To remove a directory, we use the command, rmdir. The following two
commands do exactly the same thing (as long as my current working directory is my Desktop):
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Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ rmdir TestDirectory

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ rmdir /Users/bertramlyons/

Desktop/TestDirectory

It is always safer to be very specific when using a delete command. I always use the second
example because it is less likely to cause problems if I mistype something or if my current
working directory is different than what I think it is. To be even safer, I always use the pwd
command before I do anything to files or directories. Then I always know where I am before I
assert a command.

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons/Desktop
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ rmdir /Users/bertramlyons/
Desktop/TestDirectory2

You can then use the ls command to verify that you deleted the directory as you intended.

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons/Desktop
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ ls
TestDirectory

Here it shows that I removed TestDirectory2 but not TestDirectory.

File Management
In similar fashion to directories, you can also create, delete, copy, and move/rename files with
the CLI on your computer. There are also editing options for some file types, but this tutorial does
not cover that advanced step.

Create Files
The easiest file to generate from the CLI is a standard text file. There are a couple of ways to
create a file using the command line. One option is to echo or print text and to have that text
export to a file. This can be used very simply to get a file started. For example:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ printf ‘Test.’ > testfile.txt

In this example, we use the printf command to print some type of text, in this case: ‘Test.’. Notice
that we use single quotes to surround the text we want to print. This tells the computer that this
is a text block and to ignore the content within the quotes. The “>” character is a command that
tells the system to write the results of the previous command to a new file. In this case, we are
asking it to write the results of our printf command to a file called testfile.txt. Since testfile.txt
does not already exist, it will create a new file with that name. And remember, here it is defaulting
to create the new file at the current working directory, which happens to be my desktop. You
could be more specific and include the entire path of the file you want to create:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ printf ‘Test.’ > /Users/

bertramlyons/Desktop/testfile.txt
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Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

Both of the above commands create a text file called testfile.txt on my desktop. When I open the
file, I can see that it is a basic text file with the only contents being “Test.”:

Open Files
You might want to open the file from the command line in order to check that you created it
correctly. You can use one of two easy options to do so. The open command opens the file just
as if you had used a browser to open the file. It selects the default program to open the file type
based on the extension. In this case:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ open testfile.txt

or

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ open /Users/bertramlyons/

Desktop/testfile.txt

Both of these commands will open the text file using the TextEdit program on your computer.

If you only want to read the contents of the file to verify it is what you think it is, you can also use
a command called cat. The cat command reads the text of the file directly into the CLI.

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ cat testfile.txt

Test.

Delete Files
To delete a file from your computer, you can use a similar command to the one learned above for
deleting directories. The same caution should apply to deleting files, and you should always use
pwd before you delete to make sure you know where you are in the file system. You should also
use global paths to minimize risk.

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons/Desktop
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ rm /Users/bertramlyons/
Desktop/testfile.txt 6
Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

This rm command removed my testfile.txt from my computer.

Copy Files
Copying files is the process of making an exact copy of a file in a separate location on the
file system. At the end of the process, there are two files, when originally there was one. The
command, cp, has a syntax much like a sentence: copy what where. In the example below, I
create a new testfile.txt on my Desktop and then make another copy in my Documents folder:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons/Desktop
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ printf ‘Test.’ >/Users/
bertramlyons/Desktop/testfile.txt
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ ls
testfile.txt
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ cp ./testfile.txt /Users/
bertramlyons/Documents/
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ cd /Users/bertramlyons/
Documents/
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd
/Users/bertramlyons/Documents
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Documents bertramlyons$ ls
testfile.txt

Move Files
Moving files is the process of renaming a file so that it (1) has a new name and lives in the same
location or (2) has a new path and therefore lives in a new location, or a combination of both.
At the end of the process, there is only one file. No copies are produced. For example, below I
create a new file called testfile.txt on my Desktop and then move it to my Documents folder.

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons/Desktop
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ printf ‘Test.’ >/Users/
bertramlyons/Desktop/testfile.txt
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ ls
testfile.txt
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ mv ./testfile.txt /Users/
bertramlyons/Documents/testfile.txt
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ ls
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ cd /Users/bertramlyons/
Documents/
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Desktop bertramlyons$ pwd
/Users/bertramlyons/Documents
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Documents bertramlyons$ ls
testfile.txt

The file testfile.txt no longer exists on the Desktop. It has been moved to my Documents folder.

The mv command will overwrite files without warning. Before moving a file to a new destination,
it is important to be aware of any files at that destination that might accidentally be overwritten
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Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

by the command. The mv command can be used very simply to rename files in given directories.
If I now want to change the name of testfile.txt to prodfile.txt, the mv command makes it easy.
First change directory to the directory where the testfile.txt lives, then use the simple sentence
syntax of move what where:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ cd /Users/bertramlyons/Documents

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Documents bertramlyons$ ls
testfile.txt
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Documents bertramlyons$ mv testfile.txt prodfile.txt
Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Documents bertramlyons$ ls
prodfile.txt

Making Use One essential use of these commands in a practical environment is having the ability to generate
file lists from received hard drives or digital collections of large file counts.
of These
Commands in a By combining a few of the commands covered above (in tandem with spreadsheet exercises
Library/Archive learned previously in this tutorial), you can easily walk away with a nice csv or excel spreadsheet
Environment that lists the basic information about every file on your drive.

For example, assume you received a drive from a donor and you want to do a quick assessment
of the content without having to click around through every folder on the drive. If the drive is
visible by your computer (or a local networked computer), you can use the following commands
to get a listing. Imagine the drive is connected to your laptop:

First, open Terminal. Then use the pwd command to see where you are:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ pwd

/Users/bertramlyons

Next, since all drives that connect to your mac laptop can be found in the path /Volumes, use the
cd command to change your working directory to Volumes and then use the ls command to see
what is there:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:~ bertramlyons$ cd /Volumes

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Volumes bertramlyons$ ls
Macintosh HD SIMPLETOUGH blyons_bu blyons_bu-1

Ok, good. Now we can see that there are four volumes: Macintosh HD (that’s the main hard
drive for my computer), SIMPLETOUGH (that’s the external drive I plugged in), blyons_bu and
blyons_bu-1 (those are backup volumes that I connect to virtually). In this case, I know I plugged
in the SIMPLETOUGH and that is the drive I’m after, so I’ll use a cd command to move to that
directory, and then I’ll use the ls command to see what is in it:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:Volumes bertramlyons$ cd SIMPLETOUGH

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:SIMPLETOUGH bertramlyons$ ls
$RECYCLE.BIN System Volume Information
GJ segments afc2004004
Get_started_for_Mac.app edit.seam
Recycled 8
 Using the Command Line Interface: Mac OS

Ok, now the powerful part. The listing above just shows the top level of my drive. Some
directories, some files, but it’s not showing me everything on the drive. To do that I have to add
a “-R” to my ls command, which makes the command function recursively — that is it lists all
files and folders in all folders from the current working directory down. Since we have navigated
to the root of the hard drive, if we use the recursive list command from here it will list everything
on the drive. Furthermore, because there will be many files listed, I want to print the result of the
command to a text file on my computer so I can use that data elsewhere. So we’ll combine the ls
command with the > (print to file) command:

Bertrams-MacBook-Air:SIMPLETOUGH bertramlyons$ ls -alR >/Users/

bertramlyons/Desktop/SIMPLETOUGH_list.txt

Now, if go to my Desktop, I’ll see the new SIMPLETOUGH_list.txt file. If I open it, I’ll have a
text file that lists all contents on my drive. And even better, the files are delimited in such a way
(with spaces) that I can import that .txt file into software such as Excel and use text-to-columns
functions to parse the data cleanly into columns. The sky is the limit after that!

Appendix - Following is a chart of the commands explained above in this tutorial.

Chart of
Commands Command Name Description

Discussed pwd Print working directory Returns the full path of the current directory in
which the CLI is reading.
ls List Lists the contents of the current working
directory.
cd Change directory Changes the current working directory to a new
location.
mkdir Make directory Creates a new directory.
rmdir Remove directory Deletes a specified directory.
printf Print Prints specified text.
> Print to file Prints the results of a command to a specified
file.
open Open Opens a specified file in the OS environment.
cat CAT Opens a specified file in the CLI environment.
rm Remove Deletes a specified file or files.
cp Copy Copies a specified file or files to a specified
destination.
mv Move Moves a specified file or files to a specified
destination
.

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