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Institute of Technology & Management-Gwalior ( M. P.)
DOS and Unix Similarities
If you are familiar with the DOS command shell, the transition to Unix should be fairly easy. Key differences between DOS and Unix are highlighted below.
Commands
(note: on UNIX, typing cd returns you to your home directory instead of telling you what directory you're currently in. To determine your current directory, type pwd).
File system
Both DOS and Unix use a heirarchical file system: files, directories, and subdirectories.
Both DOS and Unix call the current directory . and the parent directory ..
In DOS, subdirectory names are separated with \ . For instance, \DATA\MYDOCS\FILE1 might be the complete path to a file in DOS (minus the drive letter). On a Unix system, /data/mydocs/file1 would be the corresponding path. DOS calls the root directory \ while on Unix systems, it's /
Unix is generally case-sensitive. FILE, File, and file are three separate files on a Unix system.
Unix is not restricted to short (eight-dot-three) filenames. (The actual limit varies across Unix systems; on the Pantheon, filenames may have up to 255 characters.)
Wildcards work very similarly: * matches anything and ? matches exactly one character. But since Unix filenames don't necessarily have a . in them, *.* won't necessarily match all files: simply use * if you want to refer to every file in a directory. (One exception: filenames beginning with . are not matched by * or ? wildcards alone. These "dot files" are generally considered somewhat hidden. To match them, use .*).
Techanical Notes:
DOS
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UNIX
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Explanation
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dir
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ls
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get a list of files in a directory
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cd
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cd
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change directory (also chdir)
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md/mkdir
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mkdir
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make directory.
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rd/rmdir
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rmdir
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remove directory (must be empty)
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del/erase
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rm
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erase a file
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copy
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cp
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copy a file
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ren/move
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mv
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rename (move) a file.
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