This lesson is my customized version of the Software Carpentry lesson on The Unix Shell. Please see the original lesson for a more detailed walkthrough
Please download the data folder if you want to follow along
For our purposes the shell is ‘that box where you type in commands’. It is a command-line interface that looks like DOS (if you’re old enough to remember DOS). It has many names and ‘flavours’; Windows users have the Command Prompt, Mac and Unix/Linux users will have the terminal. In this workshop we will learn the BASH shell because it is the most popular shell language as well as being the default for Unix/Linux/Mac’s (and can be easily installed on Windows machines).
Computer scientists will sometimes give the argument that ‘everyone’ should learn to use the shell because that ‘came first’. That argument does not fly with me! I am not a computer scientist and if it does not help me with my own research, I do not care!
We are here learning about the shell, so it must be helpful and here’s why: