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TNT:
DYN-O-MITE TIPS AND TRICKS by Paul Sahner
October
25, 2002
Tame the Terminal
 The Mac OS X terminal. So
scary. So different. Right? Wrong! Let the terminal be your friend!
Of course not EVERYTHING in the terminal is a cinch, but here's
a few quick tips to make this "foreign" app a bit more
friendly.
To execute these
commands, simply launch Terminal.app (located in your
Utilities folder), type the command after "[Your-Computers-Name:~]
yourusername%" and press return.
Disclaimer!
Even though most of these commands cannot hurt your system, things
can go wrong. MacMonkies assumes NO responsibility for any harm
done to your computer.
TOP? What's top??
It's simple. All top does is show you the currently running processes.
Sure, the "Process Viewer App" could do it too, but
why not let the terminal do all the work?
Force quit not cutting
it? Then use the "kill" command. When used with the
"top" command, this one-two punch will stop bad apps
in their tracks. Just find the "PID" number of the
process you want to kill using "TOP". Then, type "Kill
#####" (#####= the PID)
Need a REALLY simple
word processor? Then say hello to PICO! Pico is the terminal's
own little note writer. Very simple and very easy.
Click
for larger view
While in PICO, you
may want to know a few simple key commands:
control - x: Exit
PICO
control - r: Open
(read) file
control - w: Write
(save) file
control - t: Check
spelling
Permissions? We
don't need no STINKIN' PERMISSIONS! But if you do, "SUDO"
will let you perform any command as the super (root) user. Be
careful with this command...it's mighty powerful.
Your ultimate guide
to Unix. The "man" or "manual" pages have
information on almost ALL commands. Simply type "man"
followed by the command you'd like to know about:
Here's what the
"man" pages say about PICO:
"Pico is a simple, display-oriented
text editor based on
the Pine message system composer. As with Pine, commands
are displayed at the bottom of the screen, and context-
sensitive help is provided. As characters are typed they
are immediately inserted into the text. Editing commands
are entered using control-key combinations. As a work-
around for communications programs that swallow certain
control characters, you can emulate a control key by
pressing ESCAPE twice, followed by the desired control
character, e.g. "ESC ESC c" would be equivalent to
enter-
ing a ctrl-c. The editor has five basic features: para-
graph justification, searching, block cut/paste, a
spelling checker, and a file browser."
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