1
Introduction to the Command Line

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Describe the basics of a filesystem
• Navigate a filesystem with command-line tools
• Perform file management tasks using the command line
• Utilize shell history and tab completion to efficiently compose commands
• Utilize shell-editing shortcuts to efficiently work with the command line
• Write and use wildcard expressions to manage groups of files and folders

This chapter gives a brief history of the command line, explains filesystems, and describes how to get into and out of the command line.