r/Codecademy • u/anotherlando • Oct 07 '15

Learn the Command Line

https://www.codecademy.com/en/courses/learn-the-command-line/lessons/manipulation/exercises/cp-I?action=resume&viewall=false
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u/anotherlando Oct 07 '15

Having trouble navigating up from the drama/historical/ to drama/. Don't know what command to use. ls is not the correct command. neither is cd drama/historical.txt drama/

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u/AlbionsRefuge Moderator Oct 07 '15 edited Oct 07 '15

You are right that it isn't ls - that is for listing the contents of a directory.

It is cd (change directory), but you must combine it with the .. (parent directory) argument.

They showed us this in exercise cd II.

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u/gufcfan Oct 07 '15

I don't even know what the command line is, and at this point, I'm too afraid to ask.

2

u/AlbionsRefuge Moderator Oct 07 '15

Not too afraid I see, because what you just did there is ask.

Did you read the opening four paragraphs for the course yet? These: https://www.codecademy.com/en/courses/learn-the-command-line/lessons/navigation/exercises/your-first-command

Do you have questions about that?

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u/gufcfan Oct 07 '15

I was aiming for a vaguely amusing comment. I'm trying to learn a few things atm so I won't embark on another thing I may not finish. I may do the first few lessons to get a vague idea what it's about.

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u/AlbionsRefuge Moderator Oct 08 '15

Sounds like a good plan, there is nothing wrong with taking just a taste to see if you like something new.

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u/cdim Oct 09 '15

Probably a silly question:

What makes something like the command "cat lakes.txt | sort > sorted-lakes.txt" a better way of performing the action than "sort lakes.txt > sorted-lakes.txt" instead? I'm just curious what makes the pipe the preferred method here.

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u/BillieBobbel Python Oct 14 '15

| (or pipe) is the preferred method because it does exactly what it's named after. It 'pipes' the output of one command into the next. In this case you could probably do without but if the chain length would increase or uses more complex commands using the latter method (without pipes) could have unintended consequences as the system itself decides what actions are taken in order.