Welcome to the Terminal

What a terminal is, why people choose it, and how to open one on your computer.

Updated

Start Here

  1. What You Can Build with Bash (Novice): The terminal turns jobs that take an afternoon of clicking into one line, and a file of those lines is a small application of your own, which this course takes you all the way to writing.
  2. The Terminal and the Mouse: Two Ways In (Novice): A file manager and a terminal are two doors into the same files on the same computer; each is better at different jobs, and this course gives you both so you can choose.
  3. How This Course Works (Novice): How Bash in Depth works on ask-codey.com, from reading a lesson and playing its Terminal Quest goals to running an exercise's checks with bats, mastering a skill and passing a module assessment.

Open a Terminal

  1. Setup: The Terminal on a Mac (Novice): Open the Terminal app, meet zsh, the shell it opens, then add Homebrew, bash 5 and bats, so every script and exercise check in this course runs on your Mac.
  2. Setup: The Terminal on Linux (Novice): Open a terminal on Ubuntu, check that it runs bash 5, install bats with apt, and make the practice folder every lesson in this course uses.
  3. Setup: The Terminal on Windows (Novice): Install Ubuntu inside Windows with WSL, open it in Windows Terminal, add bats, and learn where your Windows files are from Ubuntu and where your practice files belong.

First Words

  1. Shell, Terminal, Prompt (Novice): The terminal is the window, the shell is the program inside it that runs your commands, and the prompt is the line where the shell waits for the next one.
  2. The Shape of a Command (Novice): Almost every command has the same shape, its name, then options that change how it works, then arguments that say what to work on, with spaces between them, quotes around a name that has spaces, and Ctrl+C to stop it.

Exercise: Your Practice Folder

  1. Exercise: Your Practice Folder (Novice): Put this exercise in your practice folder, answer three questions about your own terminal, make a folder whose name has a space, and let bats check that your computer is ready for the course.