Introducing the Terminal

This brief tour of the Terminal introduces you to some of the more basic commands required to find out where you are, move about, manipulate files and directories, and get back out again when you’ve had enough.

This brief tour of the Terminal assumes you’re either an old-time Mac hand who’s been thanking your lucky stars you’ve never been near a command-line interface (CLI) or a recent Windows switcher who’s been previously scared away by the complexity or unimpressed by the functionality of the rather ill-equipped DOS shell. It is meant as a quick-start guide, introducing you to some of the more basic commands required to find out where you are, move about, manipulate files and directories, and get back out again when you’ve had enough. Come on in, the water’s fine!

Launching the Terminal

To invoke the Terminal, choose Applications → Utilities → Terminal, as shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1. Launching the Terminal

A few Dock bounces later and you’ll have a fresh Terminal window in which to work (see Figure 5-2). The Terminal informs you about the date of your last visit and welcomes you to Darwin, the Unix core of Mac OS X.