1. Terminal Adventure

Into the Terminal

This lab will explore one of the most important tools we’ll use all year: the Terminal. While it may seem complicated at first, it will quickly become your go-to tool for computer science class. The Terminal is what we’ll use to navigate our filesystem, run code files, install software, and do all kinds of other tasks.

👾 💬 FYI

In this lab, we will just use $ to represent the terminal prompt unless the path to the current directory is important. If you see this in the lab:

$ ls
some-directory some-file.txt

but your computer shows something like this:

COMPUTER: terminal_lab username$ ls
some-directory some-file.txt

don’t worry. As long as you see the $ at the end, it means you can put in new commands to your Terminal. Some terminals (including recent versions of Mac OS) use % instead of $. That’s fine too.

Terminal Adventure Lab

💻 Open a new Terminal window and enter each command with a $ one by one. Just be sure you do not type the $.

$ cd Desktop/making_with_code/pedprog/unit00/lab01
$ poetry shell
$ ls
adventure	pyproject.toml	returnToShip.py

returnToShip.py is a runnable Python file (you can tell by the .py at the end). pyproject.toml is a configuration file for this project. You’ll see this in every lab, and you may ignore it every time.

💻 Run it to see what happens:
$ python returnToShip.py
  Your adventure has only just begun. You are not yet ready to return
  to the ship. More secrets await you in the ocean's depths.
👾 💬 Your challenge is to see if you can get the treasure, using just the Terminal
Use Terminal to explore the contents of the adventure directory.

💻 Begin by going into into the adventure directory:

$ cd adventure
$ ls
seafloor	sinking.txt

sinking.txt is a text file, so we can read it.

💻 Try using the cat command:

$ cat sinking.txt
✅ CHECKPOINT:

Continue exploring into the depths of the sea to find the treasure. Once you find it, return to the lab_00_terminal_adventure directory and run returnToShip.py to see if you were successful. If you were unable to escape the monster, try again!

Before moving on, answer the following prompts in your notebook:

  • What are 3 functions of the Terminal?
  • Compare navigating the file system via the Terminal v. the Finder.

Terminal Commands

Below are some Terminal commands which might come in handy on your adventure.

Command What it does
ls List what’s in the current directory.
cd ~ Go to your home directory
cd somewhere Go to somewhere
cd .. Go to the parent directory
open file.txt Opens file.txt with its default program
cat file.txt Prints out the contents of file.txt
python x.py Runs the Python program x.py
mv old.txt new.txt Renames a file from old.txt to new.txt. Also works for directories.
mv file.txt dir Moves a file to directory dir.
mv dir1 dir2 Moves dir1 to dir2 or renames if dir2 doesn’t exist.
cp old.txt new.txt Copy a file from old.txt to new.txt.
mkdir bag Creates a new directory called bag
pwd Prints the path to where you are in the filesystem
rm file.txt removes (deletes) the file file.txt
rm -d dir removes (deletes) the directory dir
rm -r dir recursively removes (deletes) the directory dir and all subdirectories and files within that directory. Be careful, this is a powerful tool!

More terminal commands

These are just for fun. There’s lots more–ask Chris!

Command What it does
say hello Makes the computer say hello (Mac only)
`cat sinking.txt say`
cal Shows you a monthly calendar
banner hello Just try it