Useful Unix Commands Cheat Sheet
PHYS3061 Introduction to Computer Simulations of Physical Systems (Spring 2018)
FILE MANIPULATION
ls List directories and files here
ls dir List directories and files in a directory
ls -a List all files including hidden files
ls -lh List including more data in readable
format
pwd Return path to working directory
cd dir Change directory
cd .. Go to parent directory
cd / Go to root directory
cd ~ Go to home directory
cd Go to home directory
touch file Create en empty file
cp file1 file2 Copy file1 to file2
cp -r dir1 dir2 Copy dir1 to dir2 including
subdirectories
rm file Remove a file
rm -r dir Remove a directory and its files
mv dir1 dir2 Move or renames a file
mkdir dir Make a directory
rmdir dir Remove a directory
locate file Search a file
OTHERS
man command Show command usage
top Show process activity continuously
top -n1 Show process activity once
command > file Save STDOUT in a file
command >> file Append STDOUT in a file
[Tab] Autocomplete or hints
icc main.c Compile C code
icpc main.cpp Compile C++ code
ifort main.f Compile Fortran code
TEXT PROCESSING
cat file1 file2 > file3 Merge files 1 and 2 into file3
head file Print first lines from a file
head -n 5 file Print first 5 lines from a file
tail file Print last lines from a file
tail -n 5 file Print last 5 lines from a file
less file View a file
less -N file View file with line numbers
less -S file View file, wrap long lines
grep ‘pattern’ file Print lines matching a pattern
grep -c ‘pattern’ file Count lines matching a pattern
cut -f 1,3 file Retrieve data from 1,3 columns
in a tab-delimited file
sort file Sort lines from a file
sort -u file Sort and return unique lines
uniq -c file Filter adjacent repeated lines
wc file Count lines, words and bytes
COMPRESSION
tar -cf file.tar dir Group files
tar -xf file.tar Ungroup files
tar -zcf file.tar.gz dir Group and compress files
tar -zxf file.tar.gz Extract and ungroup files
REMOTE ACCESS
wget url Download a file
ssh user@server Connect to a server
scp -r local_dir
user@server:remote_dir
Copy file from local to
remote computer
scp -r user@server:remote_dir
local_dir
Copy file from remote
to local computer