Creating a cheat sheet

In this section, we'll create a text file that we can use as a cheat sheet. You can use it to keep track of all the awesome commands you're learning.

Instead of creating an empty file like we did with touch, let's try creating a file with some text in it. But first, let's learn a new command: echo

$ echo "Hello from the command line"
Hello from the command line

By default, the echo command just prints out the text we give it. Let's use it to create a file with some text in it:

echo "This is my cheat sheet" > cheat-sheet.txt

Now let's check the contents of the directory:

$ pwd
/Users/patrick/projects
$ ls
cheat-sheet.txt

OK, so the file has been created. But what was the > in the command we used? On the command line, a > is known as a "redirect." It takes the output of a command and puts it in a file. Be careful, since it's possible to overwrite files with the > command.

Let's check if there's any text in cheat-sheet.txt.

cat cheat-sheet.txt
This is my cheat sheet

As you can see, the cat command prints the contents of a file to the screen.

Using a text editor

The challenge for this section will be using a text editor to add some of the commands that we've learned to the newly created cheat sheet. Text editors are programs that allow you to edit plain text files, such as .txt, .py (Python scripts), and .csv (spreadsheet files). Remember not to use programs such as Microsoft Word to edit text files, since they add invisible characters that can cause problems. During the Institute, we'll be using Sublime as our text editor.

Challenge

Open Sublime Text and select File > Open file from the menu bar. Add the commands we've learned so far to the file. Include descriptions about what each command does. When you're done, save the file by selecting File > Save from the menu bar.

Once you're done, check the contents of the file on the command line with the cat command:

$ cat cheat-sheet.txt
My Institute Cheat Sheet

ls
lists files and folders in a directory

cd ~
change directory to home folder

...

Example