Which file system path is the default location for system files in windows 10?

The part of the operating system responsible for managing files and directories is called the file system. It organizes our data into files, which hold information, and directories (also called ‘folders’), which hold files or other directories.

Several commands are frequently used to create, inspect, rename, and delete files and directories. To start exploring them, we’ll go to our open shell window.

First, let’s find out where we are by running a command called

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 (which stands for ‘print working directory’). Directories are like places — at any time while we are using the shell, we are in exactly one place called our current working directory. Commands mostly read and write files in the current working directory, i.e. ‘here’, so knowing where you are before running a command is important.

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 shows you where you are:

$ pwd

/Users/nelle

Here, the computer’s response is

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

4, which is Nelle’s home directory:

Home Directory Variation

The home directory path will look different on different operating systems. On Linux, it may look like

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

5, and on Windows, it will be similar to

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

6 or

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

7. (Note that it may look slightly different for different versions of Windows.) In future examples, we’ve used Mac output as the default - Linux and Windows output may differ slightly but should be generally similar.

We will also assume that your

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 command returns your user’s home directory. If

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 returns something different, you may need to navigate there using

 $ ls --help

0 or some commands in this lesson will not work as written. See for more details on the

 $ ls --help

0 command.

To understand what a ‘home directory’ is, let’s have a look at how the file system as a whole is organized. For the sake of this example, we’ll be illustrating the filesystem on our scientist Nelle’s computer. After this illustration, you’ll be learning commands to explore your own filesystem, which will be constructed in a similar way, but not be exactly identical.

On Nelle’s computer, the filesystem looks like this:

At the top is the root directory that holds everything else. We refer to it using a slash character,

 $ ls --help

2, on its own; this character is the leading slash in

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

4.

Inside that directory are several other directories:

 $ ls --help

4 (which is where some built-in programs are stored),

 $ ls --help

5 (for miscellaneous data files),

 $ ls --help

6 (where users’ personal directories are located),

 $ ls --help

7 (for temporary files that don’t need to be stored long-term), and so on.

We know that our current working directory

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

4 is stored inside

 $ ls --help

9 because

 $ ls --help

9 is the first part of its name. Similarly, we know that

 $ ls --help

9 is stored inside the root directory

 $ ls --help

2 because its name begins with

 $ ls --help

2.

Slashes

Notice that there are two meanings for the

 $ ls --help

2 character. When it appears at the front of a file or directory name, it refers to the root directory. When it appears inside a path, it’s just a separator.

Underneath

 $ ls --help

9, we find one directory for each user with an account on Nelle’s machine, her colleagues imhotep and larry.

The user imhotep’s files are stored in

 $ man ls

6, user larry’s in

 $ man ls

7, and Nelle’s in

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

4. Nelle is the user in our examples here, therefore we get

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

4 as our home directory. Typically, when you open a new command prompt, you will be in your home directory to start.

Now let’s learn the command that will let us see the contents of our own filesystem. We can see what’s in our home directory by running

$ ls --help

0:

$ ls

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

(Again, your results may be slightly different depending on your operating system and how you have customized your filesystem.)

$ ls --help

0 prints the names of the files and directories in the current directory. We can make its output more comprehensible by using the

$ ls --help

2 option which tells

$ ls --help

0 to classify the output by adding a marker to file and directory names to indicate what they are:

• a trailing

   $ ls --help
  

  2 indicates that this is a directory

• $ ls --help
  

  5 indicates a link

• $ ls --help
  

  6 indicates an executable

Depending on your shell’s default settings, the shell might also use colors to indicate whether each entry is a file or directory.

$ ls -F

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

Here, we can see that our home directory contains only sub-directories. Any names in our output that don’t have a classification symbol are plain old files.

Clearing your terminal

If your screen gets too cluttered, you can clear your terminal using the

$ ls --help

7 command. You can still access previous commands using ↑ and ↓ to move line-by-line, or by scrolling in your terminal.

Getting help

$ ls --help

0 has lots of other options. There are two common ways to find out how to use a command and what options it accepts — depending on your environment, you might find that only one of these ways works:

1. We can pass a

   $ ls --help
   

   9 option to the command (available on Linux and Git Bash), such as:

    $ ls --help
   

2. We can read its manual with

   Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
   List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
   Sort entries alphabetically if neither -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.
   
   Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options, too.
     -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
     -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
         --author               with -l, print the author of each file
     -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
         --block-size=SIZE      scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g.,
                                  '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of
                                  1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
     -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
     -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                                  modification of file status information);
                                  with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                                  otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
     -C                         list entries by columns
         --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                                  if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
     -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
     -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
     -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
     -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
   ...        ...        ...
   

   0 (available on Linux and macOS), such as:

    $ man ls
   

We’ll describe both ways next.

The

$ ls --help

9 option

Most bash commands and programs that people have written to be run from within bash, support a

$ ls --help

9 option that displays more information on how to use the command or program.

$ ls --help

Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if neither -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options, too.
  -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
  -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
      --author               with -l, print the author of each file
  -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
      --block-size=SIZE      scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g.,
                               '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of
                               1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
  -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
  -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                               modification of file status information);
                               with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
  -C                         list entries by columns
      --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                               if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
  -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
  -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
  -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
  -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
...        ...        ...

Unsupported command-line options

If you try to use an option that is not supported,

$ ls --help

0 and other commands will usually print an error message similar to:

/Users/nelle

0

/Users/nelle

1

The

Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if neither -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options, too.
  -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
  -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
      --author               with -l, print the author of each file
  -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
      --block-size=SIZE      scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g.,
                               '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of
                               1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
  -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
  -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                               modification of file status information);
                               with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
  -C                         list entries by columns
      --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                               if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
  -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
  -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
  -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
  -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
...        ...        ...

0 command

The other way to learn about

$ ls --help

0 is to type

/Users/nelle

2

This command will turn your terminal into a page with a description of the

$ ls --help

0 command and its options.

To navigate through the

Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if neither -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options, too.
  -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
  -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
      --author               with -l, print the author of each file
  -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
      --block-size=SIZE      scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g.,
                               '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of
                               1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
  -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
  -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                               modification of file status information);
                               with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
  -C                         list entries by columns
      --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                               if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
  -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
  -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
  -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
  -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
...        ...        ...

0 pages, you may use ↑ and ↓ to move line-by-line, or try B and Spacebar to skip up and down by a full page. To search for a character or word in the

Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if neither -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options, too.
  -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
  -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
      --author               with -l, print the author of each file
  -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
      --block-size=SIZE      scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g.,
                               '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of
                               1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
  -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
  -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                               modification of file status information);
                               with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
  -C                         list entries by columns
      --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                               if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
  -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
  -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
  -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
  -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
...        ...        ...

0 pages, use / followed by the character or word you are searching for. Sometimes a search will result in multiple hits. If so, you can move between hits using N (for moving forward) and Shift+N (for moving backward).

To quit the

Usage: ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).
Sort entries alphabetically if neither -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options, too.
  -a, --all                  do not ignore entries starting with .
  -A, --almost-all           do not list implied . and ..
      --author               with -l, print the author of each file
  -b, --escape               print C-style escapes for nongraphic characters
      --block-size=SIZE      scale sizes by SIZE before printing them; e.g.,
                               '--block-size=M' prints sizes in units of
                               1,048,576 bytes; see SIZE format below
  -B, --ignore-backups       do not list implied entries ending with ~
  -c                         with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last
                               modification of file status information);
                               with -l: show ctime and sort by name;
                               otherwise: sort by ctime, newest first
  -C                         list entries by columns
      --color[=WHEN]         colorize the output; WHEN can be 'always' (default
                               if omitted), 'auto', or 'never'; more info below
  -d, --directory            list directories themselves, not their contents
  -D, --dired                generate output designed for Emacs' dired mode
  -f                         do not sort, enable -aU, disable -ls --color
  -F, --classify             append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
...        ...        ...

0 pages, press Q.

Manual pages on the web

Of course, there is a third way to access help for commands: searching the internet via your web browser. When using internet search, including the phrase

/Users/nelle

00 in your search query will help to find relevant results.

GNU provides links to its manuals including the core GNU utilities, which covers many commands introduced within this lesson.

Exploring More $ ls --help 0 Flags

You can also use two options at the same time. What does the command

$ ls --help

0 do when used with the

/Users/nelle

03 option? What about if you use both the

/Users/nelle

03 and the

/Users/nelle

05 option?

Some of its output is about properties that we do not cover in this lesson (such as file permissions and ownership), but the rest should be useful nevertheless.

Solution

The

/Users/nelle

03 option makes

$ ls --help

0 use a long listing format, showing not only the file/directory names but also additional information, such as the file size and the time of its last modification. If you use both the

/Users/nelle

05 option and the

/Users/nelle

03 option, this makes the file size ‘human readable’, i.e. displaying something like

/Users/nelle

10 instead of

/Users/nelle

11.

Listing in Reverse Chronological Order

By default,

$ ls --help

0 lists the contents of a directory in alphabetical order by name. The command

/Users/nelle

13 lists items by time of last change instead of alphabetically. The command

/Users/nelle

14 lists the contents of a directory in reverse order. Which file is displayed last when you combine the

/Users/nelle

15 and

/Users/nelle

16 options? Hint: You may need to use the

/Users/nelle

03 option to see the last changed dates.

Solution

The most recently changed file is listed last when using

/Users/nelle

18. This can be very useful for finding your most recent edits or checking to see if a new output file was written.

Exploring Other Directories

Not only can we use

$ ls --help

0 on the current working directory, but we can use it to list the contents of a different directory. Let’s take a look at our

/Users/nelle

20 directory by running

/Users/nelle

21, i.e., the command

$ ls --help

0 with the

$ ls --help

2 option and the

/Users/nelle

20. The argument

/Users/nelle

20 tells

$ ls --help

0 that we want a listing of something other than our current working directory:

/Users/nelle

3

/Users/nelle

4

Note that if a directory named

/Users/nelle

20 does not exist in your current working directory, this command will return an error. Typically, a

/Users/nelle

20 directory exists in your home directory, which we assume is the current working directory of your bash shell.

Your output should be a list of all the files and sub-directories in your Desktop directory, including the

/Users/nelle

29 directory you downloaded at the setup for this lesson. On many systems, the command line Desktop directory is the same as your GUI Desktop. Take a look at your Desktop to confirm that your output is accurate.

As you may now see, using a bash shell is strongly dependent on the idea that your files are organized in a hierarchical file system. Organizing things hierarchically in this way helps us keep track of our work: it’s possible to put hundreds of files in our home directory, just as it’s possible to pile hundreds of printed papers on our desk, but it’s a self-defeating strategy.

Now that we know the

/Users/nelle

29 directory is located in our Desktop directory, we can do two things.

First, we can look at its contents, using the same strategy as before, passing a directory name to

$ ls --help

0:

/Users/nelle

5

/Users/nelle

6

Second, we can actually change our location to a different directory, so we are no longer located in our home directory.

The command to change locations is

 $ ls --help

0 followed by a directory name to change our working directory.

 $ ls --help

0 stands for ‘change directory’, which is a bit misleading: the command doesn’t change the directory; it changes the shell’s current working directory. In other words it changes the shell’s idea of what directory we are in. The

 $ ls --help

0 command is akin to double-clicking a folder in a graphical interface to get into a folder.

Let’s say we want to move to the

 $ ls --help

5 directory we saw above. We can use the following series of commands to get there:

/Users/nelle

7

These commands will move us from our home directory into our Desktop directory, then into the

/Users/nelle

29 directory, then into the

/Users/nelle

37 directory. You will notice that

 $ ls --help

0 doesn’t print anything. This is normal. Many shell commands will not output anything to the screen when successfully executed. But if we run

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 after it, we can see that we are now in

/Users/nelle

40.

If we run

/Users/nelle

41 without arguments now, it lists the contents of

/Users/nelle

40, because that’s where we now are:

$ pwd

/Users/nelle

9

$ ls -F

$ ls

1

We now know how to go down the directory tree (i.e. how to go into a subdirectory), but how do we go up (i.e. how do we leave a directory and go into its parent directory)? We might try the following:

$ ls

2

$ ls

3

But we get an error! Why is this?

With our methods so far,

 $ ls --help

0 can only see sub-directories inside your current directory. There are different ways to see directories above your current location; we’ll start with the simplest.

There is a shortcut in the shell to move up one directory level that looks like this:

$ ls

4

/Users/nelle

44 is a special directory name meaning “the directory containing this one”, or more succinctly, the parent of the current directory. Sure enough, if we run

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 after running

/Users/nelle

46, we’re back in

/Users/nelle

47:

$ pwd

$ ls

6

The special directory

/Users/nelle

44 doesn’t usually show up when we run

$ ls --help

0. If we want to display it, we can add the

/Users/nelle

50 option to

/Users/nelle

41:

$ ls

7

$ ls

8

/Users/nelle

50 stands for ‘show all’ (including hidden files); it forces

$ ls --help

0 to show us file and directory names that begin with

/Users/nelle

54, such as

/Users/nelle

44 (which, if we’re in

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

4, refers to the

 $ ls --help

9 directory). As you can see, it also displays another special directory that’s just called

/Users/nelle

54, which means ‘the current working directory’. It may seem redundant to have a name for it, but we’ll see some uses for it soon.

Note that in most command line tools, multiple options can be combined with a single

/Users/nelle

59 and no spaces between the options:

/Users/nelle

60 is equivalent to

/Users/nelle

61.

Other Hidden Files

In addition to the hidden directories

/Users/nelle

44 and

/Users/nelle

54, you may also see a file called

/Users/nelle

64. This file usually contains shell configuration settings. You may also see other files and directories beginning with

/Users/nelle

54. These are usually files and directories that are used to configure different programs on your computer. The prefix

/Users/nelle

54 is used to prevent these configuration files from cluttering the terminal when a standard

$ ls --help

0 command is used.

These three commands are the basic commands for navigating the filesystem on your computer:

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2,

$ ls --help

0, and

 $ ls --help

0. Let’s explore some variations on those commands. What happens if you type

 $ ls --help

0 on its own, without giving a directory?

$ ls

9

How can you check what happened?

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 gives us the answer!

$ pwd

/Users/nelle

It turns out that

 $ ls --help

0 without an argument will return you to your home directory, which is great if you’ve got lost in your own filesystem.

Let’s try returning to the

/Users/nelle

37 directory from before. Last time, we used three commands, but we can actually string together the list of directories to move to

/Users/nelle

37 in one step:

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

2

Check that we’ve moved to the right place by running

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 and

/Users/nelle

41.

If we want to move up one level from the data directory, we could use

/Users/nelle

46. But there is another way to move to any directory, regardless of your current location.

So far, when specifying directory names, or even a directory path (as above), we have been using relative paths. When you use a relative path with a command like

$ ls --help

0 or

 $ ls --help

0, it tries to find that location from where we are, rather than from the root of the file system.

However, it is possible to specify the absolute path to a directory by including its entire path from the root directory, which is indicated by a leading slash. The leading

 $ ls --help

2 tells the computer to follow the path from the root of the file system, so it always refers to exactly one directory, no matter where we are when we run the command.

This allows us to move to our

/Users/nelle

29 directory from anywhere on the filesystem (including from inside

/Users/nelle

37). To find the absolute path we’re looking for, we can use

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 and then extract the piece we need to move to

/Users/nelle

29.

$ pwd

/Users/nelle

9

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

5

Run

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 and

/Users/nelle

41 to ensure that we’re in the directory we expect.

Two More Shortcuts

The shell interprets a tilde (

/Users/nelle

88) character at the start of a path to mean “the current user’s home directory”. For example, if Nelle’s home directory is

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

4, then

/Users/nelle

90 is equivalent to

/Users/nelle

91. This only works if it is the first character in the path:

/Users/nelle

92 is not

/Users/nelle

93.

Another shortcut is the

/Users/nelle

59 (dash) character.

 $ ls --help

0 will translate

/Users/nelle

59 into the previous directory I was in, which is faster than having to remember, then type, the full path. This is a very efficient way of moving back and forth between two directories – i.e. if you execute

/Users/nelle

97 twice, you end up back in the starting directory.

The difference between

/Users/nelle

46 and

/Users/nelle

97 is that the former brings you up, while the latter brings you back.

---

Try it! First navigate to

$ ls

00 (you should already be there).

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

6

Then

 $ ls --help

0 into the

$ ls

02 directory

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

7

Now if you run

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

8

you’ll see you’re back in

$ ls

00. Run

/Users/nelle

97 again and you’re back in

$ ls

05

Absolute vs Relative Paths

Starting from

$ ls

06, which of the following commands could Amanda use to navigate to her home directory, which is

$ ls

07?

1. $ ls
   

   08

2. $ ls
   

   09

3. $ ls
   

   10

4. $ ls
   

   11

5. $ ls
   

   12

6. $ ls
   

   13

7. $ ls
   

   14

8.  $ ls --help
   

   0

9. /Users/nelle
   

   46

Solution

1. No:

   /Users/nelle
   

   54 stands for the current directory.
2. No:

    $ ls --help
   

   2 stands for the root directory.
3. No: Amanda’s home directory is

   $ ls
   

   07.
4. No: this command goes up two levels, i.e. ends in

    $ ls --help
   

   9.
5. Yes:

   /Users/nelle
   

   88 stands for the user’s home directory, in this case

   $ ls
   

   07.
6. No: this command would navigate into a directory

   $ ls
   

   23 in the current directory if it exists.
7. Yes: unnecessarily complicated, but correct.
8. Yes: shortcut to go back to the user’s home directory.
9. Yes: goes up one level.

Relative Path Resolution

Using the filesystem diagram below, if

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 displays

$ ls

25, what will

$ ls

26 display?

1. $ ls
   

   27

2. $ ls
   

   28

3. $ ls
   

   29

4. $ ls
   

   30

Solution

1. No: there is a directory

   $ ls
   

   31 in

    $ ls --help
   

   9.
2. No: this is the content of

   $ ls
   

   33, but with

   /Users/nelle
   

   44, we asked for one level further up.
3. No: see previous explanation.
4. Yes:

   $ ls
   

   35 refers to

   $ ls
   

   36.

$ ls --help 0 Reading Comprehension

Using the filesystem diagram below, if

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

2 displays

$ ls

39, and

/Users/nelle

16 tells

$ ls --help

0 to display things in reverse order, what command(s) will result in the following output:

Applications Documents    Library      Music        Public
Desktop      Downloads    Movies       Pictures

9

1. $ ls
   

   42

2. $ ls
   

   43

3. $ ls
   

   44

Solution

1. No:

   Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
   Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/
   

   2 is not the name of a directory.
2. Yes:

   $ ls --help
   

   0 without directory argument lists files and directories in the current directory.
3. Yes: uses the absolute path explicitly.

General Syntax of a Shell Command

We have now encountered commands, options, and arguments, but it is perhaps useful to formalise some terminology.

Consider the command below as a general example of a command, which we will dissect into its component parts:

$ ls -F

0

$ ls --help

0 is the command, with an option

$ ls --help

2 and an argument

 $ ls --help

2. We’ve already encountered options which either start with a single dash (

/Users/nelle

59) or two dashes (

$ ls

51), and they change the behavior of a command. tell the command what to operate on (e.g. files and directories). Sometimes options and arguments are referred to as parameters. A command can be called with more than one option and more than one argument, but a command doesn’t always require an argument or an option.

You might sometimes see options being referred to as switches or flags, especially for options that take no argument. In this lesson we will stick with using the term option.

Each part is separated by spaces: if you omit the space between

$ ls --help

0 and

$ ls --help

2 the shell will look for a command called

$ ls

54, which doesn’t exist. Also, capitalization can be important. For example,

$ ls

55 will display the size of files and directories alongside the names, while

$ ls

56 will sort the files and directories by size, as shown below:

$ ls -F

1

$ ls -F

2

Note that the sizes returned by

$ ls

55 are in blocks. As these are defined differently for different operating systems, you may not obtain the same figures as in the example.

$ ls -F

3

$ ls -F

4

Putting all that together, our command above gives us a listing of files and directories in the root directory

 $ ls --help

2. An example of the output you might get from the above command is given below:

$ ls -F

0

$ ls -F

6

Nelle’s Pipeline: Organizing Files

Knowing this much about files and directories, Nelle is ready to organize the files that the protein assay machine will create.

She creates a directory called

$ ls

59 (to remind herself where the data came from), which will contain the data files from the assay machine, and her data processing scripts.

Each of her physical samples is labelled according to her lab’s convention with a unique ten-character ID, such as ‘NENE01729A’. This ID is what she used in her collection log to record the location, time, depth, and other characteristics of the sample, so she decides to use it as part of each data file’s name. Since the assay machine’s output is plain text, she will call her files

$ ls

60,

$ ls

61, and so on. All 1520 files will go into the same directory.

Now in her current directory

/Users/nelle

29, Nelle can see what files she has using the command:

$ ls -F

7

This command is a lot to type, but she can let the shell do most of the work through what is called tab completion. If she types:

$ ls -F

8

and then presses Tab (the tab key on her keyboard), the shell automatically completes the directory name for her:

$ ls -F

7

Pressing Tab again does nothing, since there are multiple possibilities; pressing Tab twice brings up a list of all the files.

If Nelle adds G and presses Tab again, the shell will append ‘goo’ since all files that start with ‘g’ share the first three characters ‘goo’.

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

0

To see all of those files, she can press Tab twice more.

Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/

1

This is called tab completion, and we will see it in many other tools as we go on.

Key Points

• The file system is responsible for managing information on the disk.

• Information is stored in files, which are stored in directories (folders).

• Directories can also store other directories, which then form a directory tree.

• Applications/ Documents/    Library/      Music/        Public/
  Desktop/      Downloads/    Movies/       Pictures/
  

  2 prints the user’s current working directory.

• $ ls
  

  64 prints a listing of a specific file or directory;

  $ ls --help
  

  0 on its own lists the current working directory.

• $ ls
  

  66 changes the current working directory.

• Most commands take options that begin with a single

  /Users/nelle
  

  59.

• Directory names in a path are separated with

   $ ls --help
  

  2 on Unix, but

  $ ls
  

  69 on Windows.

•  $ ls --help
  

  2 on its own is the root directory of the whole file system.

• An absolute path specifies a location from the root of the file system.

• A relative path specifies a location starting from the current location.

• /Users/nelle
  

  54 on its own means ‘the current directory’;

  /Users/nelle
  

  44 means ‘the directory above the current one’.

  Which system root is the C drive?

  By default, the system root folder for Microsoft Windows is C:/Windows. However, this can be changed for several reasons. The active partition on a hard drive could be designated by a letter other than C:, or the operating system might be Windows NT, in which case the system root folder is C:/WINNT by default.

  Which of the following file extensions indicates a Windows system file?

  Explanation: Program file extensions include .exe and .com. Windows system file extensions include . dll (dynamic link library), .

  What command lets you see a list of valid command parameters for the net use command?

  What command lets you see a list of valid command parameters for the net use command? net use /? You want to use the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) format to access a shared folder called Pictures on a computer named Home1.

  Which of the following security practices are the best example of the principle of least privilege?

  Which of the following practices are the BEST example of the principle of least privilege? All users on a Windows workstation are limited user except for one user, who is responsible for maintaining the system.