Using the command line interface (CLI) is very direct – and powerful – way of working. While it may seem intimidating at first, the command line can do a lot of work very efficiently. In Mac OS, the command line is accessed through Terminal.app, located in the Utilities folder/directory inside Applications.
The basic Terminal window looks like this:
What it is telling us is that I am on Marks-iMac, logged in as mark, in my home directory – the tilde – and the prompt is ready (the $).
This next screen shot shows the ls command being run. ls is list, and will list all directories and fils in the current directory.
ls can use options (or arguments) to provide more or other information. Here it is flagged with -la, which is long and all:
Spelling and spaces count.