Linux servers exist to process data efficiently, and files store data, so file management is critical. Directories manage files, so directory management is more crucial.

Let’s begin with the first one.

Print Current Working Directory

Let’s take a look at the manual for the pwd command:

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man pwd    # pwd's manual

With this command, we know which directory we are currently working on:

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pwd

List Directory Contents

Check out the manual for the ls command:

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man ls

Usage of ls:

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ls

Another command that is often used is a detailed version of ls, which lists file types, permissions, owners and groups, sizes, dates:

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ll

ll is an alias of ls as I mentioned earlier in this page: 7. Types of Commands - Alias

If you want to display hidden files and directories, you append the -a argument to the ll command, which is one of the commands I use most often:

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ll -a

The first directory (.) is parent directory, the one below (..) is current working directory. Hidden files or directories usually start with a dot. A line starts with a hyphen (-) means that it is a file if it starts with a letter (d) indicate that it is a directory.

Make Directory

Sometimes we need to create new directories to hold files, and with the help of the mkdir command, we can do it:

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man mkdir

Create a testd directory:

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mkdir testd
ll

Create a multilevel directory:

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mkdir -p a/b/c/d/e/f/g

Remove Directory

We can use the rmdir command to delete directories, but it can only be used to remove empty directories:

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man rmdir

We can use the rmdir command to delete the testd directory we just created:

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rmdir testd

List Tree-like Directory Contents

Because CentOS 7 doesn’t have this install this tool by default, so we need to get it manually:

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yum install tree -y

We can use the tree command to display the structure of the directory in a tree-like format.

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man tree

Let’s try this command on the multilevel directory we created above:

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tree a

Change Working Directory

We can use the cd command to switch the working directory to another directory:

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help cd

With this command, we can switch the current working directory to directory a we just created:

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cd a

We can also change our working directory to a multilevel directory at once:

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cd b/c/d/e/f
pwd
ll

Create Empty File

We can use the touch command to create empty files:

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man touch

Let’s create an empty file:

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touch a
ll

We can create multiple empty files at once:

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touch b c d
ll

Move File or Directory

We can use the mv command to move files or directories to other directories:

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man mv

With this command, we can move the file a to the directory g:

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mv a g
ll g

We can also use this command to change the name of a file or directory:

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mv b two
ll

Copy File or Directory

We can copy files or directories using the cp command:

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man cp

We can use this command to back up the file c as c_bak:

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cp c c_bak
ll

We can also copy the file d intactly to the directory g:

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cp d g
ll

System Status of File and Directory

You can use the stat command to view system status information for files or directories:

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man stat

Let’s take a look at the system status of the file d and the directory g, respectively:

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stat d
ll
stat g
ll

Remove File or Directory

We can use the rm command to delete files or directories:

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man rm

We can use the rm command to delete the file c:

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rm c

We can also use this command to delete the directory g:

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rm -r g    # -r argument means to recursively remove the files and directories under directory g

If this directory has a lot of files and we don’t want ignore the confirmation for every file or directory, then we have to add the -f parameter, which means that the deletion is enforced and no manual approval is required.

References Linux Command Line: Files and Directory

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