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

./ + "path to application/programme/executable file" - runs the bally thing! (overriding many obstacles)
- Beware! On the AppleMac the Oolite executable is hidden inside the Oolite programme icon which is really a folder in disguise! (You can peer inside using Finder by clicking on the Oolite programme icon while holding down the control key and then choosing "Show package contents".)

plutil + "space" + "path to .plist" - checks the .plist for grammatical consistency - and sometimes even tells you what is wrong!
- See  OXP howto plist: "Finding Mistakes"