Chapter 10. Working with files and folders on the command line
Most of us interact with computers using GUIs, visual ways of working with software. They’re what allow us to use a mouse to open programs and change directories. But beneath these visual interfaces are text-based commands. The GUIs translate our clicks into commands, without our having to know the commands. In Linux, you have access to these commands via the terminal. You’ll sometimes hear the terminal or command line referred to as Bash or command line interface (CLI).
Most of the time, this graphical way of interacting with our device is convenient. We point at something with our mouse and something happens, whether it’s a file opening or a setting changing. But sometimes you need to know the commands yourself. Sometimes, as we saw with Vim in the previous chapter, we need to drop into the command line to issue commands ourselves, without a GUI between us and our operating system. This could be for reasons of convenience, to more efficiently move files around our system, or to repair something on our system that can’t be fixed through a GUI.