AMITIAE - Friday 5 October 2012


Command Line Work: New Users and Terminal (11) -- Unix Tricks from OS X Daily


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By Graham K. Rogers

Terminal


Ever since the first Macs appeared, they have been known for the graphical user interface (GUI): icons instead of command line work which before the mid-1980s was the norm. Paradoxically, the arrival of OS X brought with it easy access to the command line should users ever want this, although it is possible to use the computer without ever needing to work at the command line at all.


Commands from OS X Daily

I am working my way through some of the more simple commands in Unix. Apart from the basic technical interest, one of my intentions is to introduce users to Terminal and minimize any trepidation. I am referring to outside sources from time to time.

It was with amusement, therefore, that I saw an article this morning (Saturday 6 October 2012) by Paul Horowitz, on OS X Daily (one of my regular reads): "5 Stupid Terminal Tricks to Keep You Entertained". I suggest a look at these:

  1. Watch Star Wars in ASCII
  2. Play Tetris, Pong, and Other Retro Games
  3. Talk to a Virtual Psychotherapist
  4. Read Horse Ebooks Gibberish Aloud
  5. Repeat A Word or Phrase Into CPU Inferno


Comments

I could find no way to get out of that first one. Typing Control Z just stopped the screen and I had to restart Terminal to get back to work. Other functions on the Mac were unaffected.

Playing the games uses emacs and I am currently working on an item that introduces the text editors available in Terminal (emacs, nano, pico, vi, vim and visudo), but this is much more interesting. The article suggests F10 but on some Macs (especially notebooks) the F10 key is allocated for other tasks. In that case, press ESC and then ` (the key to the left of 1). That brings up the menu: then t, then g. There is a list of 11 games.

The last item was subject of an article a couple of days ago on OS X Daily on how to stress the CPU -- for extreme analytics: "Stress Test a Mac by Maxing Out CPU". As newer processors have multiple cores, yes is run for each. The article explains how to set it up and how to use the killall command to shut the process down again.


To be continued. . . .



See Also -

  • New Users and Terminal (1) -- A Quick Look Round
  • New Users and Terminal (2) -- Basic Navigation
  • New Users and Terminal (3) -- Shell Basics
  • New Users and Terminal (4) -- Lists and Manuals
  • New Users and Terminal (5) -- Internet Use
  • New Users and Terminal (6) -- Questions of Identity
  • New Users and Terminal (7) -- A Little More Discovery
  • New Users and Terminal (8) -- File Commands and More
  • New Users and Terminal (9) -- Process Identification and Termination
  • New Users and Terminal (10) -- Browsing the Web using Unix
  • New Users and Terminal (12) -- Installed Text Editors - emacs, nano, pico, vi and vim
  • New Users and Terminal (13) -- Installing and Using the Utility, WGET
  • New Users and Terminal (14) -- Passwords, Purging and Closing Notes
  • New Users and Terminal (15) -- Permissions and chmod


    Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.
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