BOSS-Linux/C2/Working-with-Regular-Files/English-timed
From Script | Spoken-Tutorial
Revision as of 15:55, 1 December 2014 by PoojaMoolya (Talk | contribs)
Time | Narration |
00:00 | Welcome to this spoken tutorial on working with regular files in Linux. |
00:07 | Files and directories together form the Linux File System. |
00:13 | In a previous tutorial we have already seen how to work with directories. You can find the tutorial at this website. |
00:25 | In this tutorial we will see how to handle regular files. |
00:32 | We have already seen in another tutorial how we can create a file using the cat command. For details please visit this website. |
00:46 | Let us see how to copy a file from one place to another. For this we have the cp command. |
00:56 | Let us see how the command is used. |
01:00 | To copy a single file we type cp space one or more of the [OPTION]... space the name of the SOURCE file space the name of the destination file |
01:15 | To copy multiple files at the same time. We write cp space one or more of the [OPTION]...the name of the SOURCE... files that we want to copy and the name of the destination DIRECTORY in which these files would be copied. |
01:34 | Let us now see an Example. First we open a terminal. |
01:42 | We already have a file named test1 in home directory |
01:49 | To see what is in test1.We type $ cat space test1 and press enter. |
02:00 | As we can see the content of test1 is shown, now if we want to copy it into another file called test2 we would write.
$ cp space test1 space test2 and press enter. |
02:22 | Now the file has been copied. |
02:25 | If test2 doesn't exist it would be first created and then the content of test1 will be copied to it. |
02:35 | If it already existed then it would be silently overwritten.To see the copied file type
cat test2 and press enter. |
02:52 | We can also copy files from and to different directories.For example.
Type cp space /home/anirban/arc/demo1 which is the name of the file that we want to copy space /home/anirban/demo2 and press enter. |
03:32 | What this will do is that it will copy the file demo1 from source diretory /home/anirban/arc/ to the destination directory /home/anirban it will copy to a file name is demo2. |
03:51 | To see that the demo2 is there type ls space /home/anirban and press enter. |
04:07 | And as you can see here is demo2. |
04:12 | Before moving a head let us clear the screen. |
04:17 | If you want the file to have the same name in the destination directory, you may not even mention the file name.For example |
04:27 | Type cp space /home/anirban/arc/demo1 space /home/anirban/ and press enter. |
04:55 | This will again copy the file demo1 presenting the /home/anirban/arc/ directory to /home/anirban directory to a file whose name will be demo1 as well. |
05:11 | As before to see the demo1 type ls/home/anirban and press enter. |
05:25 | And as you can see the demo1 file is there. |
05:30 | Again before moving a head let us clear the screen. |
05:37 | Another instance when we do not need to give the destination file name is when we want to copy multiple files. |
05:44 | We assume that we have three files named test1 test2 test3 in our home directory. |
05:53 | Now we type cp space test1 space test2 space test3 space /home/anirban/testdir and press enter. |
06:16 | This will copy all the three files named test1,test2 and test3 to the directory /home/anirban/testdir without changing their names. |
06:30 | You see that this files have actually been copied.We will type ls space /home/anirban/testdir and press enter. |
06:52 | As you can see test1,test2 and test3 are present in this directory.
|
06:58 | There are many options that go with cp. Here we will see only the most important of them. |
07:07 | Let us first will go back to the slides. |
07:12 | Among the options -R (The capital R) is an important one. It causes recursive copying of an entire directory structure. |
07:23 | Let us see an example. |
07:27 | Let us try to copy all the contents of the testdir directory to a directory called test. |
07:36 | For that we would type cp space testdir slash test and press enter. |
07:51 | As you can see from the output message. |
07:54 | Normally we cannot copy a directory having a some content directly with 'cp command. |
08:02 | But using the -R (mius R ) option we can do this. |
08:07 | Now we type cp space -R(minus capital R) space testdir/ test and press enter. |
08:25 | The files have now been copied, to see that the test directory actually exist type ls and press enter. |
08:37 | As you can see the test directory exists. Let us clear the screen. |
08:45 | To see the contents inside test type ls test and press enter. |
08:57 | You can see the contents of the test directory. |
09:01 | Now we go back to the slides. |
09:05 | We have seen if a file is copied to another file that already exists the existing file is overwritten. |
09:14 | Now what if we inadvertently overwrite an important file? |
09:19 | To prevent anything like this to occur, we have the -b option. |
09:25 | This makes a backup of each exiting destination file. |
09:32 | We can also use the -i(interactive)option, this always warns us before overwriting any destination file. |
09:43 | Now let us see how the mv command works. |
09:47 | This is used for moving files. Now how is that useful? |
09:53 | It has two major uses. |
09:57 | It is used for rename a file or directory. |
10:00 | It also moves a group of files to a different directory. |
10:05 | mv is very similar to cp which we have already seen. So let us quickly see how mv can be used. |
10:17 | We open the terminal and type mv space test1 space test2 and press enter. |
10:32 | This will rename the file named test1 which was already present in the home directory to a file named test2. |
10:40 | If test2 already existed then it would be overwritten silently. |
10:49 | If we want our warning before the file is overwritten. |
10:54 | We can use the -i option with the mv command. |
10:59 | Say we have another file named anirban. This file we also want to renew as test2 |
11:08 | We will type mv space -i space anirban space test2 and press enter. |
11:21 | As you can see a warning is provided asking whether test2 should be overwritten or not. |
11:30 | If we press y and then press enter, the file would be actually overwritten. |
11:37 | Like cp we can use mv with multiple files but in that case the destination should be a directory. |
11:47 | Before moving ahead let us clear the screen. |
11:52 | Suppose we have 3 files named abc.txt, pop.txt and push.txt in our home directory. |
12:03 | To see there presence type ls and press enter. |
12:09 | Here are the files pop.txt, push.txt and abc.txt Let us clear the screen. |
12:24 | Now we want to move this three files to a directory called testdir. |
12:32 | What we need to do is type mv space abc.txt pop.txt push.txt and then the name of the destination folder which is testdir and press enter. |
12:58 | To see them type ls testdir and press enter. |
13:06 | You can see the files abc, pop and push.txt. |
13:14 | Now let us see some options that go with mv'. Let us first go back to the slides. |
13:22 | Then -b or –backup option is present with the mv command.It will backup every file in the destination before it is overwritten. |
13:34 | The -i(minus i) option that we have already seen warns us before overwriting any destination file. |
13:44 | The next command we will see is the rm command. This command is used for deleting files. |
13:52 | Go back to the terminal and type ls testdir. |
14:00 | We can see a file name faq.txt present. Say we want to delete it. |
14:09 | For this we type rm space testdir/faq.txt and press enter. |
14:23 | This command will remove the file faq.txt from the /testdir directory. |
14:32 | To see that the file has been actually removed or not. Let us again press ls testdir and press enter. |
14:47 | We can no longer see the file faq.txt. |
14:51 | We can use the rm command with multiple files as well. |
14:57 | The testdir directory contains two files abc2 and abc1. |
15:03 | Suppose we want to remove this files abc1 and abc2. |
15:09 | For this we would type rm space testdir/abc1 space testdir/abc2 and press enter. |
15:31 | This remove the files abc1 and abc2 from testdir directory. |
15:39 | To see that they have been removed type ls space testdir again.You can no longer see abc1' and abc2. |
15:53 | Let us clear the screen before moving ahead. |
15:58 | Now let us go back to the slides. |
16:02 | Let us summarize what we just said? |
16:04 | That is do delete a single file we write rm and than the name of the file. |
16:11 | To delete multiple files we write rm and the name of the multiple files that we want to delete. |
16:19 | Now let us look into some of the options of the rm command. |
16:24 | Sometimes a file is write protected,using rm will not delete the file then. In this case we have the -f option which can be used to force delete a file. |
16:41 | The other common option is the -r option. Let us see where this options are useful? |
16:52 | Let us switch back to the terminal. |
16:57 | rm command is not normally used for deleting directories, for that we have the rmdir command. |
17:05 | But rmdir command normally deletes a directory only then it is empty. |
17:12 | What if we want to delete a directory that has a number of files and subdirectories inside. |
17:19 | Let us try the rm command to do this. |
17:23 | Let us type rm and the directory that we want to delete which is testdir and press enter. |
17:31 | From the output message we can see that we can not use the rm directory to delete testdir. |
17:39 | But if we combine the -r and -f option then we can do this. |
17:47 | Press rm -rf testdir and then press enter. |
18:00 | Now the testdir directory has been successfully deleted. |
18:06 | Let us now go back to the slides to study the next command. |
18:11 | The cmp command. |
18:13 | Sometimes we need to check whether two files are same. If they are same then we may delete one of them. |
18:22 | Also we may want to see whether a file has changed since the last version. |
18:28 | For these and many other purposes we can use the cmp command. |
18:33 | It compares two files byte by byte. |
18:38 | To compare file1 and file2 we would write cmp file1 file2. |
18: 47 | If the two files have exactly same content then no message would be shown. |
18:55 | Only the prompt will be printed. |
18:58 | If there are differences in their contents then the location of the first mismatch will be printed on the terminal. |
19:10 | Let us see how cmp works.We have two files named sample1 and sample2 in our home directory. |
19:19 | Let us see what they contain? |
19:22 | Type cat sample1 and press enter. It contains the text This is a Linux file to test the cmp command |
19:34 | The other file sample2 will contain the text and to see that we will type cat sample2 and press enter. |
19:44 | It will contain the text This is a Unix file to test the cmp command. |
19:50 | Now we would apply the cmp command on this two files. |
19:55 | We will write cmp space sample1 space sample2 and press enter. |
20:08 | As we can see the first difference between the two files sample1 and sample2 is pointed out. |
20:16 | Let us clear the screen before moving ahead to the next command. |
20:22 | The next command we will see is the wc command. |
20:26 | This command is used to count the number of characters, words and lines in a file. |
20:34 | We have a file named sample3 in our home directory. |
20:39 | Let us see its content, for that we will type cat space sample3 and press enter. |
20:50 | This is the content of sample3. |
20:54 | Now let us use the wc command on this file. |
20:59 | For that we would write wc sample3 and press enter. |
21:10 | These command points out that the file has 6 lines, 67 words and 385 characters. |
21:22 | These were some of the commands that help us to work with files. |
21:27 | There are many more commands. Moreover each of the command that we saw has many other options. |
21:36 | I encourage you to see more about them using the man command. |
21:44 | This brings me to the end of this tutorial at last. |
21:48 | Spoken Tutorial Project is a part of the Talk to a Teacher project, supported by the National Mission on Education through ICT, MHRD, Government of India. |
22:02 | More information on the same is available at the following link http://spoken-tutorial.org/NMEICT-Intro. |
22:18 | This is Anirban signing off . Thanks for joining. |