Introduction to UNIX

Galen Sasaki
September 24, 2004

UNIX is a command line oriented operating system.  There are a large collections of UNIX commands to manage your account.  These include commands for deleting files ("rm"), navigating through directories, etc.  For a quick introduction to some of these commands, read the tutorial at www-ee.eng.hawaii.edu/~sasaki/EE260/Labs/labUnix.html.  You can find other resources on the web.  Another tutorial can be found at www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/

To write programs, you need an editor to create files.  The simplest is pico.  To start pico, just type "pico".  If you want to edit an existing file "filename" then type "pico filename".   If you are programming in the C language, the header files typically have the suffix ".h" and the program files typically have the suffix ".c".  You can also create a "makefile" which is a collection of compiling commands for the operating system to follow.  This is useful if you have a large collection of commands to type.  A makefile is basically a script.  There is only one makefile in any directory and its name is "makefile."  You can find a tutorial on makefiles at www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/intro.html.  At this web site, you can also find tutorials on C Shell and "vi", which is another editor.

To compile, you may use "cc" or "gcc".  This will create an executable file (one that you can run on the computer) and its name will be "a.out".  To run the program, type "./a.out".  Notice that the filename "a.out" is prefixed with a period and forward-slash.  The tutorial on makefile at www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/intro.html also explains how to compile in UNIX.