Command line lab

Introduction

Note: This can be a pair programming activity or done independently.

Developing web apps requires a degree of comfort navigating and interacting with your operating system through the command line. Later in the course, you'll be writing and running Python and JavaScript programs and running them from the command line. For now, we'll be practicing creating, modifying, and moving files and directories (in the Unix command line environment, we refer to folders as directories) in your terminal to get you practicing Unix commands.

So close Finder now and don't open it again. If you wanna use Finder to organize photos from your family holiday or sweet vacation last summer then that's fine, but never use it for anything related to web development! As developers we use the Unix command line almost exclusively for managing files and folde--whoops! I meant directories.

For your first lab, you're going to create files and directories to organize your favorite books, movies, and music. Then, you're going to reorganize them.

There are a couple links to Unix command cheatsheets in the "Additional Resources" section, and you could probably find dozens of useful ones on Google.

Important: "Man(ual) pages"

Nearly every Unix command has a what's called a "man page" (short for "manual page"). You can get extensive info about how any Unix command works by typing man and then the name of the program.

For example...

$ man ls

...will give you exhaustive information about how the ls command works and the different options (called "flags") you can use to customize the output. It'll seem like too much information at first, because it is at this point, but get in the habit of using man pages now, and you'll learn to love them.

Hit the Q key to get out of the man page viewer.

Exercise

Requirements

• In your directory for today, create a directory called command-line-lab. Inside of command-line-lab, create a directory called my-favorite-things. You'll use that directory to do the exercises below.

• Organize your favorite books

  • in the my-favorite-things directory, create a directory called books
  • create a directory in books named after your favorite author (e.g. mark_twain, or john-grisham, but avoid spaces!)
  • create files named after some of the author's books in the author's directory
  • open the books directory in VS Code, Sublime, or Atom
  • edit each book file to contain a brief description of the book

• Organize your favorite movies

  • in the my-favorite-things directory, create a directory called movies
  • create a directory in the movies directory named after your favorite actor
  • create a directory in that actor directory named after that actor's breakthrough movie
  • go back to the movies directory and create a text file named after the actor's character in their breakthrough movie
  • move the text file into the directory for that actor
  • look back at your code editor and edit that text file to include a description of the character's role in the movie

• Organize your favorite music

  • in the my-favorite-things directory, create a directory called music
  • go into the music directory
  • create a directory called disco
  • create a text file in disco called ymca
  • delete the disco directory
  • create a directory called creed
  • delete the creed directory
  • create directories called one-direction, the-strokes, and rihanna
  • create a text file in one-direction called what-makes-you-beautiful.txt
  • from within one-direction, copy (not move) what-makes-you-beautiful.txt into the-strokes and also copy it into rihanna. rename those files with songs by those artists.

• Reorganize everything

  • in the my-favorite-things directory, create a directory called media
  • move books, movies, and music into the media directory

• Organize the top music, movies, and books of 2015

  • move to the my-favorite-things directory and duplicate (make a copy of) the media directory—your copy should be named 2015-media
  • in the 2015-media directory, rename each directory to have 2015- before the title
  • delete the contents of 2015-music, 2015-movies, and 2015-books
  • create a file called top-ten-movies.html in 2015-movies
  • create a file called top-ten-songs.html in 2015-music
  • create a file called top-ten-books.html in 2015-books
  • create an ordered list - using HTML! - of the top 10 movies, songs, and books in each of the appropriate files

Bonus

• Use man pages and google and the additional resources below to figure out how to do the following:

  • find commands that let you look at the top/bottom 10 lines of each file
  • figure out how search through a file from the command line - without opening the file - for a string of text

Starter code

No starter code needed for this lab!

Reference Screenshots

Be sure you open up your my-favorite-things directory in your code editor, so you can track your progress. Here's a look at what your files/directories should look like after each big step in the exercise:

• After "Organize your favorite books":

• After "Organize your favorite movies":

• After "Organize your favorite music":

• After "Reorganize everything"

• After "Organize the top music, movies, and books of 2015"

Additional Resources

• MAN PAGES! (see "RTFM") The entire development community prizes self-reliance as a virtue. To succeed, developers need to persistent and driven solve problems on their own. Of course we'll guide you, keep an eye on you, and answer questions, but as we do so we will focus on instilling/enhancing this quality in our developers throughout the entire class.
• A list of CLI Shortcuts
• An awesome Unix command cheatsheet