Chapter 10. Common Unix Shell Commands: File, Directory, and Disk Operations

Summary

In this chapter, we began the introduction to what is, for most practical purposes, a second operating system living under the hood of your Mac OS X computer. The BSD Unix variant underlying the graphical interface to Mac OS X is a fully featured Unix and provides a command-line interface to your operating system.

This chapter covered some of the background information that you need to know for interacting with the command line, and getting help. However, the most important thing to remember from this chapter is not the particular commands or syntax detailed here, but rather the general way that these commands work and feel. You'll get much more exposure to the Unix experience in the coming chapters. The most powerful tool in a Unix user's toolbox is an understanding of "The Unix Way." The best method of learning about Unix is by experience and experimentation. You will soon find that you can use your understanding of the way things work in Unix to rearrange and recombine examples that we've shown to synthesize new solutions.