cmd_cheatsheet.md

The command line interface (CLI) is a text interface for your computer. It's a program that takes in commands, which it passes on to the computer's operating system to run. From the command line, you can navigate through files and folders on your computer and run applications. When you open a CLI, it shows you your current location in the file system (for example, ancatmara@INGEN C:\Users\ancatmara) and a special symbol that shows you that the CLI is ready to take a command. This symbol is > on Windows and $ on Unix systems.

CLIs "remember" a certain amount of commands that you run during a session, and you can navigate between them using ⇅ arrows: ↑ will get you the previous command you run, and ↓ goes to the next one. Another useful thing is autocomplete that helps you avoid typing long paths and filenames: just type the first few letters of a file/directory name you need, press tab, and voilà!

The standard CLI is called cmd on Windows and Terminal on Linux and Mac OS. As for me, the standard Windows cmd is not the most user friendly shell, but there are a few alternatives. For example, this console allows switching between cmd, PowerShell, Git bash or any other shell in a single app.

Basic commands in Windows and Unix

Action	Windows	Linux / MacOS (Bash)
Change directory	cd	cd
Create file	copy con	touch
Create directory	mkdir	mkdir
Delete file	del, erase	rm; rm -rf -- delete folder and all files inside
Delete directory	rmdir	rmdir
Print message	echo	echo
Print file contents	type	cat
Copy file	copy, xcopy	cp
Rename file	ren, rename	mv
Move file	move	mv
Search file	where	find, locate
Print list of files and directories	dir	ls, dir
Help	help	apropos, man, whatis

You can find more useful commands in this tutorial on Codecademy.

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Circumflex ("^") means "Ctrl" (^C = Ctrl + C) on any system.

^C — break

^S — stop and restart

^I — same as "Tab" key, goes over files and directories

^M — same as Enter.

^H — same as Backspace.

NB! Many common shortcuts, like Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V for copy and paste, won't work in standard CLIs!

Python

Command	Action
python	Run Python in terminal
python <PYTHON_SCRIPT_NAME>	Run Python script
python --version	Check Python version
pip freeze	See list of installed packagess
pip install	Install package
pip uninstall	Delete package
pip show	See info about package
pip search	Search for package (if you don't remember the exact name)

More on working with pip in the official documentation.

If you have Anaconda, you can use its package manager called conda (the analogue of pip). Here is a nice conda cheatsheet and documentation.

Git

Git is a version control system (VCS) and a very powerful tool honoured with a few thick textbooks (here is just one example). You'll find some basic commands below.

Command	Action
git clone	Clone repository
git pull	Pull changes from remote repository
git init	Create repository
git status	Check status of local changes
git add	Add selected files to be tracked
git add *	Add all files to be tracked
git rm	Delete files
git commit -m "Commit message"	Commit changes; -m is for commit message
git push	Push local changes to remote
git log	Check log

You can download git from the official website. They also have great multilingual documentation, where you can find information on more advanced things like correcting mistakes and branching.

NB! Git installation for Windows comes with a Bash CLI, which is a useful tool for running bash commands that aren't supported in Windows cmd.

Authorisation

After you install git on your machine, there are two important things to do.

1. Tell git your name and email.

git config --global user.name "your name / github login"

git config --global user.email "the email you registered with on github.com"

2. Generate an SSH key on your machine and upload it to GitHub. Using the SSH protocol, you can connect and authenticate to remote servers and services without supplying your username and personal access token at each visit. Here is a nice step-by-step guide from GitHub.