Mactuts+ Quiz #2: Terminal Basics

Mactuts+ Quiz #2: Terminal Basics

on Dec 13th 2012 with 21 comments
This entry is part 10 of 10 in the Taming The Terminal Session
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Terminal is one of our favorite topics here at Mactuts+. It’s a truly advanced application that allows you to take control of your Mac at a level not possible with any other utility. Today we’re going to find out how much you’ve learned. Browse through our Terminal tutorials, then take the quiz below to test your knowledge!

How’d You Do?

Now that you’ve taken our Terminal quiz, leave a comment below and let us know how you did. Was it easy or tricky? We want to know!

Josh Johnson is secondfret on Graphicriver
 
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  • http://joshfabean.com/ Fabean

    I got 100% but I’ve never actually used ‘touch’ to create a new file. I always just say ‘vim FILENAME’. But I see the advantage of ‘touch’ is it creates a file without entering the file. I’m not exactly sure as to when I would need that, normally I create a file to code things in it.

    • secondfret
      Author

      Here I use it to write an Alfred plugin that creates a whole empty directory for starting a web project:
      http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/automation/write-an-alfred-extension-to-create-files-on-the-fly/

    • MacAndreas

      touch is also useful to ‘touch’ an existing file, say to change the last modification time of a file… see ‘man touch’…

      • secondfret
        Author

        Yeah, that’s really it’s primary use, it’s more of a convenient bonus that it happens to create the file if it doesn’t exist already.

    • http://www.facebook.com/matt.lubner Matt Lubner

      Not to be too technical, but “vim FILENAME” won’t create the file until you save it with “:w” :P

  • MacAndreas

    I’ve got 90%… But one answer is wrong…. sudo is not for administrators to become a normal user, but is for normal users to run programms as root…

    • secondfret
      • MacAndreas

        You are right! You have to be an Administrator to use sudo… I’m from Unix where root is eq. to admin ;-)

      • BaylorRae

        It’s possible to add a standard account to the `sudoers` file.

        cc: @1c1b83d5d93270523ffe9deddc7ab988:disqus

  • Iseghohi John

    I don’t know how to use the terminal, is there a tutorial for it? i need to learn the shortcuts and the codes. thanks

  • http://www.twitter.com/KreativeMente Kreative Mente

    80% :sadface:

    • secondfret
      Author

      Keep at it! Our Terminal tuts will help you ace it.

  • esetlzn

    90%,UPPER CASE FOR 8 T ^ T

  • http://www.facebook.com/matt.lubner Matt Lubner

    Only an 80%!? Shesh, and here I thought knowing when to use “xargs -0″ meant I knew stuff…

    I’m tempted to call bull on #4 (parameters vs. arguments, really?), but #9 schooled me. I had no idea “sudo” accepts a user parameter. That might actually prove useful…

  • Vladan

    Only 90%. :-) Need to learn more. :-)

  • morph

    80%, but i see now that i knew all the answers :)

  • Guest

    100%, but I would disagree with one of the answers.

    “True or False? The format of a Terminal instruction consists of a command followed by its parameters, and finally its argument.”

    I guessed that this quiz would have True as the right answer for this, but I think it over simplifies commands, and a more correct answer would be false, as a command may have pipes, input/output redirection, environment variables given, etc.

    It depends on what you determine a single command to be. If you consider a single command to be a single line, then this would negate the answer to the question: `PATH=”$PATH:.”`. On the other hand, if you consider it to be the execution of a single executable, then `echo “test” | pbcopy` would be wrong as the argument there is piped in at the beginning rather than at the end of the command.

    • http://www.mac.tutsplus.com/ Josh Johnson

      Interesting point, perhaps we should’ve said “a basic Terminal command…”

  • dougieladd

    LOL – 60% and I’ve never used terminal in my life before… :)

  • paul

    it was nice