Introduction

As a developer, I find myself using the terminal all the time. In this article, I'll list the top 10 commands I use the most for speed and productivity, along with some examples.

The ls command is used to list the contents of a directory. It is a very basic command but it is a lot quicker than using the Finder to list the contents of a directory.

Next we'll look at the cd command. This command is used to change the current working directory. Again, it is a very basic command but it is a lot quicker than using the Finder to change the current working directory.

pwd is used to print the current working directory. This command is very useful when you want to know where you are in a directory structure.

Getting into the more advanced commands is the cat command. This command is used to read the contents of a file without opening it. Here is an example:

cat README.md

Output:

# This is a markdown file

In this example, we are assuming that README.md has the contents # This is a markdown file.

The head command is used to print the first few lines of a file. Here is an example:

head README.md

Similarly to head, the tail command is used to print the last few lines of a file. Here is an example:

tail README.md

Next is the grep command. This command is used to search for a pattern in a file. Here is an example:

grep -i "markdown" README.md

Explanation

In this example, we are searching for the word markdown in the file README.md. We are also searching for the word markdown ignoring case, which is the -i flag.

The mkdir command is used to create a new directory. Here is an example:

mkdir new-directory

The touch command is used to create a new file. Here is an example:

touch newfile.txt

The last command is the rm command. This command is used to delete a file or directory. Here is an example:

rm newfile.txt

Bonus 11th Tip!

As a bonus, you can use the && operator to run multiple commands in one line. Here is an example:

mkdir new-directory && cd new-directory && touch newfile.txt

You can see we can make a new folder, change to the new folder, and create a new file all in one line!

Conclusion

That's it for this article! I hope you find this article useful and that you can use it to speed up your development process. Here is a lsit of all the mac terminal commands we went over:

1. ls
2. cd
3. pwd
4. cat
5. head
6. tail
7. grep
8. mkdir
9. touch
10. rm
11. &&