b. Prompting

Let’s get started.

When the shell is first opened, you are presented with a prompt, indicating that the shell is waiting for input.

$

The shell typically uses $ as the prompt, but may use a different symbol. In the examples for this lesson, we’ll show the prompt as $ . Most importantly: when typing commands, either from these lessons or from other sources, do not type the prompt, only the commands that follow it. Also note that after you type a command, you have to press the Enter key to execute it.

[user@machine directory]$ _

The prompt is followed by a text cursor, a character that indicates the position where your typing will appear. The cursor is usually a flashing or solid block, but it can also be an underscore or a pipe. You may have seen it in a text editor program, for example.

So let’s try our first command, ls which is short for listing. This command will list the contents of the current directory:

$ ls

Desktop     Downloads   Movies      Pictures
Documents   Library     Music       Public

$ ks

ks: command not found