CS50 Cheatsheet for Terminal

Basics of the Terminal

Open the terminal

You can open the terminal by pressing Ctrl + Shift + ` or by clicking on the Terminal tab in the top left bar of VS Code.

Navigating Folders (Directories)

Make a folder/subdirectory

$ mkdir world

Your folders will now look like this on the left side of VS Code:

other-folder1/
other-folder2/
world/

You can also make a folder in the lefthand EXPLORER panel in VS Code as in the image below:

Enter a folder in terminal

$ cd world

You will now be in the world folder:

world/ $ 

List contents of a folder

$ ls

You will see the contents of the folder:

$ ls 
other-folder1/ other-folder2/ world/
$ 

Exit a folder / go to a higher-level folder

psets/1/ $ cd ..

You will know be in the parent folder psets:

psets/ $ 

Check the current folder

You can check the current folder by typing:

$ pwd

You will see the current folder (the “present working directory”):

$ pwd
/Users/username/psets/1
$ 

Files

Create a file

$ code hello.c

You can also create a file in the lefthand EXPLORER panel in VS Code.

Compile a C file

A C file features human-readable code that needs to be compiled (i.e., translated) into machine-readable code. You can compile a C file like this:

$ make hello

Run a C file

You can run the compiled file like this:

$ ./hello

Delete a file or folder

You can delete a file like this:

$ rm hello.c

You can delete a folder and its contents like this:

$ rm -r world

You can also delete a folder and its contents like this:

$ rm -rf world

What are the differences between these commands?

• rm hello.c will delete the file hello.c.
• rm -r world will delete the folder world and all its contents recursively.
• rm -rf world will delete the folder world and all its contents recursively and forcefully, ignoring any errors.

Note that rm -rf is a very dangerous command that will delete everything in the folder and subfolders without asking for confirmation. Be very careful when using this command!