Working with files and directories

Output file and directory information

Output filename portion of file path

basename <path/file>

Output directory portion of file path

dirname <path/file>

Open and edit files

Open a file

open <file>

Open the current directory in finder

open .

Open a file with the specified application (Mac OSX)

open -a /Applications/<app> <file>

Open file in the nano text editor

nano <file>

Show line endings for files (Unix: ASCII, DOS: ASCII + CRLF)

file <file>

Work with remote mounts and external hard drives

Access remote mounts (such as Samba shares and external hard drives)

cd /Volumes

Copy, move and delete files

Copy a file (recursive copy / preserve symlinks)

cp <source> <destination>
cp -r <source> <destination>
cp -a <source> <destination>

Move or rename a file

mv <source> <destination>

Remove a file

rm <file>

Remove files and folders recursively without confirmation

rm -rf <dirname>

Symbolic link from source file to destination file

ln -s <destination> <source>

Rename files

Requires rename via brew install rename

Rename files (-n or --dry-run to test rename output with making changes)

rename <transform> <file-glob>

Replace search string with replace string for matching files

rename -s <search> <replace> <file-glob>

Rename all txt files with a sequential number in the format text-1.txt

rename -e 's/.*/text-$N.txt/' *.txt
rename -N ...01 -X -e '$_ = "text-$N"' *.txt

Uppercase first letter of zip file name (-f to force rename on macOS when changing case)

 rename -f 's/\b(\w)/\u$1/' *.zip

Create and delete directories

Create directories

mkdir <dir>
mkdir <dir1> <dir2> <dir3>

Create multiple directories and subdirectories in one step

mkdir -p dir1 dir2/subdir1 dir2/subdir2 dir3

Alternative syntax for multiple directories using array of items via {}

mkdir -p dir1/{subdir1,subdir2} dir2

Multiple directory syntax can be nested

mkdir -p tmp/{d1/{sd1,sd2},d2,d3/{sd3,sd4}}

Remove a directory

rmdir <dirname>

Examples of advanced file actions

Create a sequence of files from a sigle copy

for FILE in {1..10}; do cp <file> <new-name>$FILE; done

Create, read and output files

Output the contents of the file

cat <file>

Join files together

cat <file1> <file2>

Create or overwrite a file and add content via the command line (end with CTRL + d on a fresh line)

cat > <file>

Append text via the command line to the file (end with CTRL + s)

cat >> <file>

Overwrite the contents of the file with text

echo "<text>" > <file>

Append the contents of file with the text

echo "<text>" >> <file>

Create an empty file

touch <file>
touch <file1> <file2> <file3>

Set modified date to current time

touch <file>

Set modified and accessed date to specific time (Time format: YYYYMMDDHHMM)

touch -t <time> <file>
touch -t 201001151445 <file>

Replicate modified date of source file and copy to target file

touch -r <source> <target>

Set creation date of file (SetFile requires xcode command line tools)

SetFile -d '<date> <time>' <file>
SetFile -d '01/15/2010 14:45:00' <file>

File Status

Output status information for file (use -f for selective metadata and output format)

stat <file>

Output file size followed by the file name

stat -f "%z %N" <file>

Tail and Head

Display the first or last part of a file

head
tail

Less and More

Paginate through a text file output directly in the terminal

more <filename>

Paginate through a text files output directly in the terminal (includes ability to go backwards)

less <filename>

Less commands

Go to end of file

>

Go to end of file

<

Back one page

b

Forward one page

f