Useful Linux Navigating Commands

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Category: Generalia

Browse files on another ubuntu system from client ubuntu system:

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Find the size of a directory: du -sh dirname/

Tail like command for windows using Windows Powershell to extract last few lines of a large text file:

Get-Content "inputfile.txt" -Wait -Tail 3000 > tail.txt

 

Useful Linux Navigating Commands

Zip a folder (and exclude a sub-folder)

zip -r myarchive.zip dir1 -x dir1/ignoreDir1/**\* dir1/ignoreDir2/**\*

  • To remove a folder with all its contents (including all interior folders):

    rm -rf /path/to/directory

  • To remove all the contents of the folder (including all interior folders) but not the folder itself:

    rm -rf /path/to/directory/*

    or, if you want to make sure that hidden files/directories are also removed:

    rm -rf /path/to/directory/{*,.*}

  • To remove all the "files" from inside a folder(not removing interior folders):

    rm -f /path/to/directory/{*,.*}

Warning: if you have spaces in your path, make sure to always use quotes.

rm -rf /path/to the/directory/*

is equivalent to 2 separate rm -rf calls:

rm -rf /path/to
rm -rf the/directory/*

To avoid this issue, you can use 'single-quotes'(prevents all expansions, even of shell variables) or "double-quotes"(allows expansion of shell variables, but prevents other expansions):

rm -rf "/path/to the/directory/"*

Where:

  • rm - stands for remove
  • -f - stands for force which is helpful when you don't want to be asked/prompted if you want to remove an archive, for example.
  • -r - stands for recursive which means that you want to go recursively down every folder and remove everything.

To be updated more...

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