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Introduction to the Linux Command Line on Raspberry Pi OS

20% Percent Complete

Getting Started with the Command Line
Managing Files and Directories
Managing Software
System Monitoring and Management
Networking Basics
Scripting Basics
Working with Git (Optional Advanced Topic)
Final Project: Building a Simple Command Line Application
Resources and Next Steps

Working with Files

Learn how to create, view, edit, and manage files using the command line.

By Kevin McAleer,    2 Minutes

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Introduction

Files are at the heart of everything you do on your Raspberry Pi. This lesson will teach you how to create, view, edit, and manage files using various command-line tools.

Learning Objectives

  • Create files using the touch command.
  • View file contents with commands like cat, less, head, and tail.
  • Edit files using the nano text editor.

Creating Files with touch

The touch command is used to create an empty file. For example, to create a file named example.txt, you would use:

touch example.txt

A new file called example.txt will be created in the current directory, you can confirm this by using the ls command and checking for the file.

touch command

Viewing File Contents

  • cat: Concatenates and displays the contents of a file.

      cat example.txt

  • less: Views file content page by page, useful for large files.

      less example.txt

  • head: Displays the first few lines of a file.

      head example.txt

  • tail: Displays the last few lines of a file.

      tail example.txt

Editing Files with nano

The nano editor is a simple, easy-to-use text editor. To edit example.txt, type:

nano example.txt

Within nano, you can type text, and use keyboard shortcuts to save and exit (e.g., Ctrl + O to save and Ctrl + X to exit).

We’ll cover nano in more detail in a later lesson.

Summary

In this lesson, you learned how to create, view, and edit files using the command line. Mastering these commands is crucial for managing files on your Raspberry Pi efficiently.

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