Terminal Commands

List all files and directories, including hidden ones, with detailed info

List all files including hidden ones in PowerShell (alias: ls or dir)

Change into a directory. Use ~ for home, .. for parent, - to go back

Print the full path of your current working directory

Recursively search for files matching a pattern

Search for a text pattern inside files recursively, showing line numbers

PowerShell equivalent of grep — searches for text within files

Create a directory and all its parents in one command

Create an empty file or update its last-modified timestamp

Copy a file or directory (-r for recursive)

Move or rename a file or directory

Delete a file or directory permanently. No trash bin — gone forever

Print a file's contents to the terminal

View a file with scrolling. Press q to quit, / to search inside

Watch a file's new content in real time. Essential for logs

Change file permissions. 755 for executables, 644 for files, 600 for secrets

Run a command as the superuser (root). Required for system-level tasks

Make HTTP requests from the terminal. Perfect for testing APIs

Connect to a remote server securely over SSH

Securely copy files to or from a remote server

List all running processes and filter by name

Force-kill a process by its PID. Get the PID from ps or lsof

Find what process is using a specific network port

Interactive process viewer — better than top. Shows CPU, memory, per-process

Find and replace text in a file in-place

Extract specific columns from structured text output

Count occurrences of each unique line, sorted by most common

Count lines (-l), words (-w), or characters (-c) in a file

Create a compressed tar archive. -c create, -z gzip, -f filename

Pipe output of one command as input to another. The | is one of the most powerful shell features

Create a shortcut for a long command. Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc to persist

Print environment variables, optionally filtered by name

Search your command history. Press Ctrl+R to interactively search

Find where a command's binary lives on your system

Show disk usage of all mounted filesystems in human-readable format

Show total size of a directory in human-readable format

Pass output of one command as arguments to another

Edit your cron jobs to schedule commands at specific times

Run a command that keeps going after you close the terminal