.. Objectives .. ---------- .. At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to: .. 1. Search for files in many different ways .. 2. Compare files with same names .. 3. Create and extract an archive .. 4. Customize a shell .. Prerequisites .. ------------- .. 1. Getting started with Linux .. 2. Basic File Handling Script ------ .. L1 {{{ Show the first slide containing title, name of the production team along with the logo of MHRD }}} .. R1 Hello friends and Welcome to the tutorial on 'Miscellaneous Tools'. .. L2 {{{ Show slide with objectives }}} .. R2 At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to, 1. Search for files in many different ways. #. Compare files with same names. #. Create and extract an archive. #. Customize a shell. .. L3 {{{ Switch to the pre-requisite slide }}} .. R3 Before beginning this tutorial,we would suggest you to complete the previous tutorials as being displayed currently. .. R4 There are a bunch of tools, that will prove to be handy in your day to day work. These tools will help you quickly perform tasks like searching for files, comparing files and checking if they are the same, viewing the exact differences between them, etc. .. L4 .. L5 {{{ Show slide, find }}} .. R5 Let us start with the first tool - 'find' . The ``find`` command lets you find files in a directory hierarchy. It offers a very complex feature set allowing you to search for files with a wide range of restrictions. We shall only look at some of the most frequently used ones. .. R6 To find the files, which end with an extension, ``.pdf``, saved in the current folder and all it's subfolders, we say .. L6 {{{ Open the terminal }}} :: find . -name "*.pdf" .. R7 The ``find`` command also lists out the directory and sub-directory names To list them, we say, .. L7 :: find . -type d .. R8 In short, ``find`` allows you to set limits on file-size, modification time and whole lot of other things which you can explore on seeing the man page of ``find``. .. L8 .. R9 Let us now move on to the next tool, the compare tool. To compare two files, whether they are identical or not, we can use the ``cmp`` command. Let us consider some situation. Suppose, we run the ``find`` command to locate some file, and it turns out that we have a file with same name in different location. In this case, if we are unsure, whether both the files are the same, we can use the ``cmp`` command to check if the files are identical. .. L9 :: find . -name quick.c ./Desktop/programs/quick.c ./c-folder/quick.c cmp Desktop/programs/quick.c c-folder/quick.c .. L10 {{{ Show slide, cmp }}} .. R10 If the cmp command doesn't return any output, it means that both files are exactly identical. If there are any differences in the file, it gives you the exact byte location at which the first difference occurred. .. R11 Let us now make a small change in one of quick.c file and run the ``cmp`` command again. .. L11 {{{ Switch to the terminal }}} :: cmp Desktop/programs/quick.c c-folder/quick.c .. R12 As we can see, it gives the exact location as to where a change is made. Now, we may not be happy with just the knowledge that the files are different. We may want to see the exact differences between the two files. The ``diff`` command can be used to find the exact differences between the files. .. L12 .. L13 :: diff Desktop/programs/quick.c c-folder/quick.c .. R13 We get back a line by line difference between the two files. .. L14 {{{ Show slide, diff }}} .. R14 The ``>`` mark indicates the content that has been added to the second file, which was not present in the first file. The ``<`` mark indicates the lines that were present in the first file, but are not existent in the second file. .. L15 {{{ Show slide, tar }}} .. R15 You would often come across (archive) files which are called *tarballs*. A tar ball is essentially a collection of files, which may or may not be compressed. Essentially, it eases the job of storing, backing up and transporting multiple files, at once. .. R16 The following set of commands extracts the contents of the ``allfiles.tar`` tarball to the directory extract. .. L16 {{{ Switch to terminal }}} :: mkdir extract cp allfiles.tar extract/ cd extract tar -xvf allfiles.tar .. L17 {{{ Show slide, extracting an archive }}} .. R17 The option, ``x`` tells ``tar`` to extract the files in the archive file specified by the ``f`` option. The ``v`` option tells ``tar`` to give out a verbose output. .. R18 Similarly, if we wish to create a ``tar`` archive, we use the ``c`` option instead of the ``x`` option. For instance, the command below creates an archive from all the files with the ``.txt`` extension. .. L18 {{{ Switch to terminal }}} :: tar -cvzf newarchive.tar *.txt .. R19 You can also create and extract compressed archives using ``tar``. It supports a wide variety of compressions like gzip, bzip2, lzma, etc. We need to add an additional option to ``tar`` to handle these compressions. +-------------+------------+ | Compression | Option | +-------------+------------+ | gzip | ``-z`` | | bzip2 | ``-j`` | | lzma | ``--lzma`` | +-------------+------------+ .. L19 .. R20 So, if we wished to create a gzip archive in the previous command, we change it to the following .. L20 :: tar -cvzf newarchive.tar.gz *.txt .. L21 {{{ Show slide, customizing your shell }}} .. R21 What would you do, if you want bash to execute a particular command each time you start it up? For instance, say you want the current directory to be your Desktop instead of your home folder, each time bash starts up. Bash reads and executes commands in a whole bunch of files called start-up files, when it starts up. When bash starts up as an interactive login shell, it reads the files ``/etc/profile``, ``~/.bash_profile``, ``~/.bash_login``, and ``~/.profile`` in that order. When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc. This can be prevented using the ``--norc`` option. Instead of using the ``~/.bashrc`` file on start-up, we can force the bash to use another file, for which the ``--rcfile`` option may be used. Now, you know what you should do, to change the current directory to you Desktop. Just put a ``cd ~/Desktop`` into your ``~/.bashrc`` and you are set! But as you know that the start-up files are used for a lot more complex things than this. You could set (or unset) aliases and a whole bunch of environment variables in the ``.bashrc``, like changing environment variables etc. .. L22 {{{ Switch to 'Summary' slide }}} .. R22 This brings us to the end of the end of this tutorial. In this tutorial, we have learnt to, 1. Make use of the ``find`` command to find files in a directory hierarchy. #. Find the differences between files with the same name, using the ``cmp`` and ``diff`` commands. .. L23 {{{ Switch to 'Summary..' slide }}} .. R23 #. Extract and create compressed archive's using the ``tar`` command. #. Customize one's shell according to one's choice. .. L24 {{{ Show self assessment questions slide }}} .. R24 Here are some self assessment questions for you to solve 1. Look at the man page of ``find`` and state the options which deal with symbolic links. 2. How do you append tar files to an archive? .. L25 {{{ Solution of self assessment questions on slide }}} .. R25 And the answers, 1. The -H, -L and -P options with the ``find`` command control the treatment of symbolic links. 2. To append tar files to an archive, we can use the ``tar`` command either with the ``-A`` option or the ``-r`` option, as, :: $ tar -Af OR $ tar -rf .. L27 {{{ Show the SDES & FOSSEE slide }}} .. R27 Software Development techniques for Engineers and Scientists - SDES, is an initiative by FOSSEE. For more information, please visit the given link. Free and Open-source Software for Science and Engineering Education - FOSSEE, is based at IIT Bombay which is funded by MHRD as part of National Mission on Education through ICT. .. L28 {{{ Show the ``About the Spoken Tutorial Project'' slide }}} .. R28 Watch the video available at the following link. It summarises the Spoken Tutorial project.If you do not have good bandwidth, you can download and watch it. .. L29 {{{ Show the `` Spoken Tutorial Workshops'' slide }}} .. R29 The Spoken Tutorial Project Team conducts workshops using spoken tutorials, gives certificates to those who pass an online test. For more details, contact contact@spoken-tutorial.org .. L30 {{{ Show the ``Acknowledgements'' slide }}} .. R30 Spoken Tutorial Project is a part of the "Talk to a Teacher" project. It is supported by the National Mission on Education through ICT, MHRD, Government of India. More information on this mission is available at the given link. .. L31 {{{ Show the Thank you slide }}} .. R31 Hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful. Thank you!