Chapter 4. The Terminal and Shell

The Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities) is the portal to the internals of Mac OS X. You can useand become proficient withthe operating system without ever touching the Terminal. But if you truly want to dig deep and learn how to unleash the full potential of the underlying Unix capabilities of the system, the command line is essential. And once you know how to use it, the Terminal becomes a tool so valuable that many power users keep it in their Dock or in the Finder's Sidebar for quick access.

Tempting as it may be to think of the Terminal as the Unix part of Mac OS X, it's simply an interface to the underlying Unix operating system, and specifically to those programs that give the system its Unix character.

This chapter makes the assumption that you have at least a passing familiarity with the idea of the command line. Maybe you remember using a shared system at a school somewhere. Or maybe you had a DOS-based machine that required you to go sleuthing into the depths of the C:\ world. In any case, the aim of this chapter is to familiarize you with the Terminal, the shell, and some of the other tools you'll need through the rest of the book.

If this chapter goes over your head and you need more of a grounding on the subject, you should pick up Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger, by David Taylor (O'Reilly).