Linux Commands You Need to Know as Web Developer

As web developer, somewhere along the line, you’ll meet unix or linux shell. For those who never use unix/linux before, it could be frustate to deal with shell command.

For a simple thing as list files in current directory to extract zip files. So here a quick list commands you probably need for your next journey. In my opinion, it won’t hurt you to learn some of linux shell commands. Take a quick look, and maybe you have familiar with some of them.

• chmod - change permission of a file or directory
  
  

  Linux has something called permission on file or folder.

  
  

  r - Read permission. Permission to read a file or browse a folder

  
  

  w - Write permission. Permission to write to file or create new file in the folder

  
  

  x - Execute permission. Permission to execute file

  
  

  
  $ls -al
  -rw-r--r--  1 gchandrasa gchandrasa     43 2009-02-15 15:00 sample.txt
  

  
  

  the first 3 characters after -, rw- belong to users permission.
  
  the second 3 characters r-- belong to group permission.
  
  
  the third 3 characters r-- belong to others user permission.

  
  

  One way to change this permission is using the number
  
  r = 4
  
  w = 2
  
  x = 1
  
  So if you want to change the sample.txt permission to others, give read and write permissions.
  
  r = 4 and w = 2, so rw = 4 + 2 = 6

  
  
  

  
  $chmod 646 sample.txt
  

  
  

  Give read and write permission to users, read permission to group, and read and write permission to others.

  
  


• cd - change directory
  
  Use this command to change your current directory.
  
  Example : you need to change directory to Documents
  
  

  $ cd Documents

  
  



• cp - copy files and directories
  
  Example : copy file index.php from directory a to directory b
  
  

  $ cp a/index.php b/

  
  


• ls - list files in a directory
  
  Example : list files in current directory
  
  

  $ ls

  
  
  

  Example : list files in current directory, and show hidden files.
  

  $ ls -a

  
  


• man - display manual for a command
  

  $ man mv

  
  


• mkdir - create new directories
  

  $ mkdir newfolder

  
  


• mv - move (rename) files
  
  
  Use this command to move your file(s) or to rename file(s).
  
  

  $ mv oldfolder newfolder

  
  


• rm - remove files or directories.
  
  Delete all files with extension jpg in current directory.
  
  

  $ rm *.jpg

  
  


• tar - The GNU version of the tar archiving utility
  
  
  Untar and extract file
  
  

  $ tar -xvf test.tar.bz2

  
  


• unzip - list, test and extract compressed files in a ZIP archive
  
  Extract file zip
  
  

  $ unzip test.zip