The bash terminal in MacOS X

Many tasks in the following weeks will need to be performed on the terminal (or 'command line').

Hit CMD + SPACE to open the search window, enter 'terminal' and hit RETURN.

In order to keep the terminal in the dock also after you close it, right click on the symbol and select 'Options' → 'keep in dock'.

Let's continue with a list of useful commands – just type them into the command line and confirm with RETURN.

ls             # get list of files in the current directory
mkdir molsim   # make directory 'molsim'
cd molsim      # change into directory 'molsim'
cd ..          # go up one directory
pwd            # print path to the current working directory
open .         # opens current directory in Finder

Now it is time to copy some files from the teacher account.

cd                                    # change into your home directory
cp ~c329s00/exercises/.bash_profile . # copy course-specific system settings
cd molsim                             # change into directory 'molsim'
cp -r ~c329s00/exercises/intro .      # copy directory 'intro' from teacher account

After this, please close and reopen your terminal in order to activate the course-specific settings you copied.

We are now ready to get started. Below you find some additional commands that will come in handy later.

open myfile     # opens 'myfile' with default program
open -t myfile  # opens 'myfile' in text editor
vim myfile      # opens 'myfile' in vim (powerful command line text editor)

In order to take a screen shot, hit CMD+ SHIFT + 4.