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Thursday, February 20, 2014

Navigating the Command Line Directory

   Hello, this is George again, and today I’d like to teach you how to navigate across the command line directory, showing you how to make and remove directories, and how to move files between them. Directories are a lot like files on Windows in that they contain the exact same files and addresses, but only come in text form on command. Many machines used in businesses don’t make use of native GUIs, and many consoles use command line OSs to avoid clutter and space being taken on their hardware to ensure efficiency. Learning to use a command line is crucial in these cases.

First, use cd to navigate to your main hard drive of choice, using the cd command and the address of your hard drive (i.e. cd C:\ for most users.)
When you’ve navigated to the main drive of your choice, enter the following command : mkdir [name]

This tells the computer to make a directory (a folder in Windows) at the address your currently on. When you’ve finished making the directory, use cd C:\[name] to navigate into your new directory and enter another new directory with mkdir [name2], which will represent a new sub directory of the current directory. Use cd C:\name\name2 to navigate to the new directory.
From here, type in this command dir. This command will output the current contents of the directory your on; for now it’s won’t output any names to the far right, but two lines: ‘.’ And ‘..’ Type cd .. to navigate back to the previous directory, the first one you made.

Now, enter notepad and create a new txt file for demonstration purposes, adding any text inside you’d like, if at all. This txt file will be used to demonstrate some more commands, and that’s all. When this file is finished, save it and exit Notepad, then enter dir to see the contents of your directory; you should see the new file you’ve made listed as a txt file.

Now to demonstrate the move command: First, use the new text file you’ve made and enter it into the sub directory name2 by typing: move txtfile.txt name2 (remember to include the .txt at the end of the file. This will move the text file to the new sub directory, and you can use cd to navigate to that directory and use dir to find the text file.

Now, using move again, we will change the name of the .txt file you’ve just moved: this is the other use of the move command, and it is the keyword used in the Windows GUI when you rename a file with right-click!
This of a new name for the .txt file, and enter the following : move oldName.txt newName.txt. Then try dir to test your new text file name.
But remember to make it different than the current name somehow, because capitalization isn’t relevant to this command, but it can’t be the same sequence of characters used from the oldName:
(i.e move txtFile.txt txtfile.txt will not work, and will return an error)

Now to clean up the project without the GUI, follow the next two commands closely, to avoid damage to the hard drive and minimize risk! First use del textFile.txt to eliminate your text file from the current directory [name2]. Use dir to ensure the file was removed.

Finally, navigate with cd to the first directory [name], then enter rd [name2] to remove the sub directory from [name]. The navigate back to the main hard drive to remove the first directory: rd [name].
Finally, type exit to return from the command line window and close it! Ok, recap and practice these commands at your leisure, with definitions below!

mkdir - Make a new directory at the current address.
cd - Change Directory (equivalent of print working directory (pwd) when no argument is present)
(also, use 'cd ..' to move back a directory)
dir - Outputs a list of the contents of the current directory.
move - Move the files into another directory with a directory, and rename a file with a new file name.
del - delete files from directory
rd - remove directories

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