10 Essential Terminal Commands
The classics everyone should know cold - these ten commands cover most of what you’ll do in a terminal on any given day.
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- pwd
- Prints the full path of the directory you're currently in.
- ls
- Lists the files and folders in your current directory.
- cd
- Changes your current directory to the one you specify.
- mkdir
- Creates a new, empty directory with the name you give it.
- rm
- Removes (deletes) files. Add -r to remove whole folders — there's no trash bin, so use it carefully.
- cp
- Copies a file (or folder, with -r) to a new location, leaving the original in place.
- mv
- Moves a file to a new location, or renames it if the destination is in the same folder.
- cat
- Prints a file's entire contents straight to the terminal window.
- grep
- Searches for a pattern of text inside files and prints the matching lines.
- sudo
- Runs the next command with admin (superuser) privileges — use it when a command says 'permission denied.'