The Unix Shell

Information about the 8 February 2019 session

Our lesson will be based on the Software Carpentry Unix Shell basics, but abbreviated for time. The whole lesson is included on this site for reference and personal learning, but we won’t try to cram all of it in our lunch-session.

You are encouraged to bring a laptop and follow along during the session. If you do, please check out the setup section above. That prep is best done before the session so you’re ready to start using the shell and same files during our talk.

• Windows users will want to install Git for Windows to run Bash shell on their computer.
• The data-shell.zip file contains the example files we will be working with.

See you on Friday!

The Unix shell has been around longer than most of its users have been alive. It has survived so long because it’s a power tool that allows people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. More importantly, it helps them combine existing programs in new ways and automate repetitive tasks so they aren’t typing the same things over and over again. Use of the shell is fundamental to using a wide range of other powerful tools and computing resources (including “high-performance computing” supercomputers). These lessons will start you on a path towards using these resources effectively.

Prerequisites

This lesson guides you through the basics of file systems and the shell. If you have stored files on a computer at all and recognize the word “file” and either “directory” or “folder” (two common words for the same thing), you’re ready for this lesson.

If you’re already comfortable manipulating files and directories, searching for files with grep and find, and writing simple loops and scripts, you probably want to explore the next lesson: shell-extras.