Useful characters

Pipe to chain commands together

|

Direct output to a file

>

Append content to existing file

>>

Read content from a file

<

Shortcut for the home directory (eg. cd ~)

~

Represents the current directory

.

Traverse up one directory level (eg. cd ..)

..

Execute the script with the name script_name

./script_name

Alternative way to executure script

source script_name

Separate long commands with a \ at the end of each line

\

Example:

cd dir/name && \
somecommand && \
someothercommand

Join multiple commands together, but only run the second command if the first succeeds

&&

Example:

cd dir && touch file && echo "contents" > file

Join multiple commands together, but only run the second command if the first one fails

||

Example:

cd dir/name || mkdir dir/name