Review

Congratulations! You’ve learned five commands commonly used to navigate the filesystem from the command line. What can we generalize so far?

• The command line is a text interface for the computer’s operating system. To access the command line, we use the terminal.

• A filesystem organizes a computer’s files and directories into a tree structure. It starts with the root directory. Each parent directory can contain more child directories and files.

• From the command line, you can navigate through files and folders on your computer:

  • pwd outputs the name of the current working directory.

  • ls lists all files and directories in the working directory.

  • cd switches you into the directory you specify.

  • mkdir creates a new directory in the working directory.

  • touch creates a new file inside the working directory.

• You can use helper commands to make navigation easier:

  • clear clears the terminal

  • tab autocompletes the name of a file or directory

  • ↑ and ↓ allow you to cycle through previous commands