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2.7 Practice Exercises - Basic Linux Commands

1. Exploring and Navigating​

  • Find out which directory you are in:

    Show Answer
    pwd

  • List everything in your current directory:

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    ls -l

  • Move into your home directory, then into the Documents folder (create one first if it doesn’t exist):

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    mkdir -p ~/Documents
    cd ~/Documents

2. Working with Directories​

  • Inside Documents, create a new folder called workshop:

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    mkdir workshop

  • Go into workshop and make three subfolders: notes, data, and scripts:

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    cd workshop
    mkdir notes data scripts

  • Verify the structure:

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    ls -R

3. Creating and Viewing Files​

  • Inside notes/, create a file day1.txt and add some text with nano:

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    nano notes/day1.txt

  • Display the file’s content:

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    cat notes/day1.txt

  • Show just the first and last few lines of the file:

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    head notes/day1.txt
    tail notes/day1.txt

4. Copying, Moving, and Renaming​

  • Copy day1.txt into the data/ folder:

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    cp notes/day1.txt data/

  • Rename the copied file to backup.txt:

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    mv data/day1.txt data/backup.txt

  • Move the original day1.txt into the scripts/ folder:

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    mv notes/day1.txt scripts/

5. Deleting Safely​

  • Create an empty file called temp.txt in workshop/:

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    touch temp.txt

  • Delete it:

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    rm temp.txt

  • Try removing a whole directory (scripts/):

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    rm -r scripts

⚠️ Always double-check the path before using rm -r!

6. Searching and Filtering​

  • Make a text file with several lines:

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    echo -e "apple\nbanana\ncherry\napricot\nblueberry" > fruits.txt

  • Find all lines containing "ap":

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    grep "ap" fruits.txt

  • Count how many lines are in the file:

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    wc -l fruits.txt

7. Redirecting and Piping​

  • Save a directory listing into a file:

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    ls -l > listing.txt

  • Append the output of date into the same file:

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    date >> listing.txt

  • Chain commands: list files and immediately search for "txt":

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    ls | grep txt

Create a symbolic link from your Windows Downloads folder to the WSL downloads directory:

  • Create the link Downloads/Win-Downloads in WSL:

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    ln -s /mnt/c/Users/YourWindowsUsername/Downloads ~/Downloads/Win-Downloads

9. Bonus Challenge: Mini Project​

  1. Create a folder project.
  2. Inside it, create a src folder and a README.txt.
  3. Write a short note in README.txt with nano.
  4. Copy README.txt into src/ and rename it notes.txt.
  5. Use grep to search for a word inside notes.txt.
  6. Redirect the search results into a new file results.txt.
  7. Finally, remove the entire project folder.
Show Answer
mkdir project
cd project
mkdir src
nano README.txt
cp README.txt src/notes.txt
grep "word" src/notes.txt > results.txt
cd ..
rm -r project