CPSCI 107: Applications, Implications, and Issues

Lab 1

January 20, 2006

Part One

Open a connection to warp from your lab computer and log in. Play along at your computer as we discuss the following topics:

Unix File Management, continued

• understand the command–options–argument sequence
• understand access permissions for files and directories
• know how to read the access permissions on a file or directory
• know how to copy, rename, and delete files (cp, mv, and rm)
• know how to change the access permission for a file or directory (chmod)
• know how to take a quick look at the contents of a file (cat, head, tail, more, and less)
• know the file “wildcard” characters

Part Two

For this part of the lab, you'll use the emacs editor to create and edit files. We'll do the following things together, more or less in the order below. At the end of lab, review this list and make sure that you understand:

Basic emacs

• how to start emacs
• how to create a file using emacs
• how to modify a file using the emacs editor
• how to do a “save” or “save as” in emacs
• how to exit emacs

bash

• what the ampersand character (&) does at the end of a command line
• what “bashrc” is an abbreviation for
• why the name of the file begins with a dot
• what the .bashrc file is used for
• what a comment is in the bash language (both concept and how to make one)
• what the stuff we put in the .bashrc file does

Note: it is extremely important that your .bashrc file works correctly. The text you'll see me type at the screen in the front of the must be duplicated exactly in your file, right down to the presence/absence of spaces. (The bash shell is very picky about how you type commands to it.) If at any point, you're not sure whether I'm typing an l (i.e., a lowercase L) or a 1 (i.e., a one) make sure you ask—it makes a big difference.

If you get an error message when you log in, call me over and we'll look at your file. But don't count on getting an error message. For example, the commands
      ls -l (i.e., ls hyphen L) and
      ls -1 (i.e., ls hyphen one)
are both legal, but they do completely different things. (Try them and see.) So make sure you type carefully when entering text into your .bashrc file.

Here's a sample .bashrc file to use for comparison.

Homework

More emacs

You will be using emacs a lot this semester, so over the weekend, work through the interactive emacs tutorial. (To do this, connect to warp, fire up emacs, and enter C-h t).

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