Terminal provides access to the Zeta shell from whitin the graphical
environment. The Terminal application comes with Zeta as a system
application.
The shell interprets command lines you enter, runs programs you
ask for, and generally coordinates what happens between you and
the operating system. You can have several terminal windows running
at the same time. each doing something different.
The graphical environment provides access to many of the most commonly
used UNIX commands, but some commands are still only available to
the user from within the text-based interface of the shell.
The Terminal window displays a command prompt when and where you
can type the shell commands. The shell outputs a prompt to tell
you that you can enter a command line. The shell prompts usually
end with $. When the shell command is completed, the prompt will
reappear.
Each command line includes the name of a Unix program. When you
press RETURN, the shell interprets your command line and executes
the program.
The bash shell remember command lines you've typed before. This
feature can save you a lot of retyping common commands. After you've
typed and executed some command lines, press the up-arrow key on
your keyboard. Once you have recalled a command line, you can even
edit it before executing it once again. The left-arrow and right-arrow
keys will move your cursor along the command line to the point where
you want to make the change.
When you finish using the Terminal window, you can exit the Terminal
window by typing the shell command exit (or press Ctrl+D). This
will close the Terminal window. The Terminal application shouldn't
be closed by pressing the close button in the tab. You will then
not close all running commands, for instance commands connecting
you to another computer (rlogin, telnet and ssh) will continue running.
Common shells include Bourne (sh), Korn (ksh), C (csh) and tcsh.
The most widely used is bash, and that is also the one used in Zeta.
Examples on commands:
* date - shows today's date
* pwd - print working directory
* cd - change directory
* ls - list
* mv - move
* cp - copy
* rm - remove
Some commands are built in to the Terminal application and do not
excist as separate files. Examples are starting and stopping commands,
repeating commands, and moving through the file structure.
The man command
Is in the different version of UNIX available, Zeta has adapted
the UNIX way of documenting the different shell based applications.
Most shell applications has an inbuilt manual, that you can access
by simply writing man in front of the application, for instance
$ man pine.
You will find that only reading the manual pages isn't enough,
as understanding them can difficult. Most of these pages seem complex
at first sight, having been written for UNIX system administrators.
The key to understanding them, is to read enough of them so that
you begin to absorb the concept through familiarity.
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