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Bash & zsh Shell Terminal Basics Cheat Sheet

Improve your Bash & zsh Shell skills with the handy shortcuts featured in
this convenient cheat sheet!

Contents Nov 14, 2023 · 6 min read

Richie Cotton
Webinar & podcast host, course and book author, spends all day chit-chatting about data

TO P I C S

Data Science

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What are Bash & zsh Terminals?

Shell terminals, such as Bash and zsh, are text-based user interfaces for interacting with
an operating system. They allow you to input commands through a command line,
offering direct communication with the system for tasks like file manipulation, program
execution, and system control. Bash is common on Linux systems and zsh is the default
on MacOS systems.

Definitions
The working directory is the directory that commands are executed from. By default,
commands will read and write files to this directory.

The root directory is the top of the file system. All other directories are contained within
the hierarchy of this directory.

An absolute path starts from the root directory. Think of it like latitude and longitude -
the values to a location don't change wherever you are.

A relative path starts from the working directory. Think of it like directions from where
you are, like "20 kilometers West from here".

A glob pattern is a way of specifying multiple files at once.

A regular expression is a more complex way of specifying text fragments. Learn more
in DataCamp's Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet.

Getting Help
Display the manual for a command with man

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man head

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File System Navigation

Print the current working directory with pwd

pwd

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Change the current working directory with cd

cd data/raw # Go to raw dir inside data dir inside current dir

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Absolute paths start with the root directory, /

cd /home

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Relative paths can start with the current working directory, .

cd ./images

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Move up to the parent directory with .. (can be used repeatedly)

cd ../.. # Go to grandparent directory

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List files and folders in the current working directory with ls

ls

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List all files and folders, including hidden ones (names starting .) with ls -a

ls -a

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List files and folders in a human-readable format with ls -lh

ls -lh

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List files and folders matching a glob pattern with ls pattern

ls *.csv # Returns all CSV files

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Recursively list all files below the current working directory with ls -R

ls -R

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List estimated disk usage of files and folders in a human-readable format with du -ah

du -ah

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Find files by name in the current directory & its subdirectories with find . -type f -name

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pattern

find . -type f -name *.ipynb # Find Juypter notebooks

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Displaying Files
Display the whole file with cat

cat README.txt

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Display a whole file, a page at a time with less

less README.txt

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Display the first few lines of a file with head

head -n 10 filename sales.csv # Get first 10 lines of sales.csv

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Display the last few lines of a file with tail

tail -n 10 filename sales.csv # Get last 10 lines of sales.csv

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Display columns of a CSV file with cut

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cut -d , -f 2-5, 8 sales.csv # Using comma delimiter, select fields 2 to 5 & 8

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Display the lines of a file containing text matching a regular expression with grep

grep [0-9]+ sales.csv # Matches lines containing numbers

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Display the names of files with filenames containing text matching a regular expression
with grep -r

grep -r sales[0-9]+\.csv # Matches filesnames with "sales", numbers, dot "csv"

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Get the line word & character count of a file with wc

wc README.txt

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Copying, Moving and Removing Files

Copy (and paste) a file to a new directory with cp

cp sales.csv data/sales-2023.csv # Copy to data dir and rename

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Copy files matching a glob pattern with cp pattern newdir

cp *.csv data/ # Copy all CSV files to data dir

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Move (cut and paste) a file to a new directory with mv

mv sales.csv data/sales-2023.csv # Move to data dir and rename

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Rename a file by moving it into the current directory

mv sales.csv sales-2023.csv

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Move files matching a glob pattern with mv pattern newdir

mv *.csv data/ # Move all CSV files to data dir

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Prevent overwriting existing files with mv -n

mv -n sales.csv data/sales-2023.csv # Rename unless new filename exists

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Remove (delete) a file with rm

rm bad_data.json

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Remove a directory with rmdir

rmdir temp_results

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Combining commands
Redirect the output from a command to a file with >

head -n 5 sales.csv > top_sales.csv

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Pipe the output from a command to another command with |

head -n 5 sales.csv | tail -n 1

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Redirect the input to a command with <

head -n 5 < sales.csv

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Glob Patterns
Match one or more character with *

*.txt # Match all txt files

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Match a single character with ?

sales202?.csv # Match this decade's sales data files

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Match any character in the square brackets with [...]

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sales202[0123].csv # Match sales data files for 2020 to 2023

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Match any patterns listed in the curly braces with {...}

{*.csv *.tsv} # Matches all CSV and TSV files

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Manipulating File Contents

Sort lines of a file with sort

sort random_order.txt

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Sort in descending order using sort -r

sort -r random_order.txt

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Combine cut and sort using a pipe to sort a column of a CSV file

cut -d , -f 2 | sort

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Remove adjacent duplicate lines with uniq

uniq sales.csv

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Get counts of (adjacent) duplicate lines with uniq -c

uniq -c sales.csv

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Combine sort and uniq using a pipe to remove duplicate lines

sort random_order.txt | uniq

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Variables
List all environment variables with set

set

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Create a shell variable with name=value (no spaces around =)

mydata=sales.csv

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Create a shell variable from the output of a command with name=$(command)

pyfiles=$(ls *.py)

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Print an environment variable or shell variable name with echo $value

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echo $HOME

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Convert a shell variable into an environment variable with export

export mydata

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Loops and Flow Control

Execute a command for multiple values with for variable in values; do command; done

datafiles=*.csv
for file in datafiles; do echo $file; done

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Spread loops over multiple lines for increased readability

datafiles=*.csv
for file in datafiles
do
echo $file
done

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Conditionally execute code with if [ condn ]; then command; else alt_command; fi

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x=99;
if [ $x > 50 ] ; then
echo "too high";
elif [ $x < 50 ] ; then
echo "too low";
else
echo "spot on";
fi

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Reusing Commands
See your previous commands with history

history

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Save commands in a shell file (extension .sh) and run them with bash or zsh

bash mycommands.sh
zsh mycommands.sh

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AUTHOR

Richie Cotton

Richie helps individuals and organizations get better at using data and AI. He's been a
data scientist since before it was called data science, and has written two books and
created many DataCamp courses on the subject. He is a host of the DataFramed
podcast, and runs DataCamp's webinar program.

TO P I C S

Data Science

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