Basic Shell File Manipulation

At the heart of using any operating system is the ability to work with files—copying, moving, renaming, creating, and deleting them. Modern graphical operating systems have sophisticated visual metaphors for these tasks, such as dragging file icons in and out of folders. However, on the command line, such file operations require the use of specific commands.

Most of FreeBSD’s file-manipulation tools are analogous to similar tools in MS-DOS. If you’ve worked with MS-DOS before, most of this chapter will come fairly easily to you. If you haven’t worked with MS-DOS before, some background information is necessary.

How FreeBSD Stores Files

Like most other modern operating systems, FreeBSD stores files in a hierarchal ...

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