Library Carpentry: The UNIX Shell

This Library Carpentry lesson introduces librarians to the Unix Shell. At the conclusion of the lesson you will: understand the basics of the Unix shell; understand why and how to use the command line; use shell commands to work with directories and files; use shell commands to find and manipulate data.

Prerequisites

To complete this lesson, you will need a UNIX-like shell environment -see Setup. You will also need to download the file shell-lesson.zip from GitHub to your desktop and extract it there (once you have unzipped/extracted the file, you should end up with a folder called “shell-lesson”).

Schedule

	Setup	Download files required for the lesson
00:00	1. What is the shell?	What is the shell? What is the command line? Why should I use it?
00:30	2. Navigating the filesystem	How do you move around the filesystem in the shell?
01:00	3. Working with files and directories	How can I copy, move, and delete files and directories? How can I read files?
01:30	4. Automating the tedious with loops	What is a loop? How can a loop be used to repeat a task?
02:00	5. Counting and extracting with the shell	How can I count data? How can I find data within files? How can I combine existing commands to do new things?
02:40	6. Regular Expressions	How can I find data within files? How can I combine existing commands to do new things?
03:10	7. Working with free text	How do we work with complex files?
04:10	Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor. We recommend that you complete all of the excercises on your own time to re-inforce your learning.