Terminal Utility

AppleMac's Terminal icon

Terminal peers under the hood of your computer and allows you to muck about with the engine!

Overview

The Terminal Utility allows powerful text-based access to the inner workings of your operating system (the wonderful-looking windows designs on the AppleMac and Windows largely hide what is going on beneath to stop you wrecking it!).

Your terminal is usually hidden away inside your utilities folder (often in your Applications folder).

It often operates inside just one particular folder/directory inside your computer - and you need to navigate to get to the folder containing what you want to nobble!

Common Commands

Navigatory

ls - lists the files in the current folder/directory where terminal is currently snooping

ls-l - lists the files and gives their properties (eg readable/writable/is it an application/etc.)

cd - changes its snooping folder/directory to the top one in your tree of folders/directories

cd + "space" + "name of folder" - changes its snooping folder/directory to the one you have just named 

Nobblificatory

./ + "name of application/programme/executable file" - runs the bally thing! (overriding many obstacles)