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RHCSA - Understand and Use Essential Tools: Create, Delete, Copy, & Move Files & Directories

In this objective we go into detail on creating, deleting, copying and moving files & directories.

Lesson Setup

A seperate folder to practice the objective in can be setup:

Create & change into lesson directory

mkdir -p ~/file-dir-practice
cd ~/file-dir-practice

Ensure to follow the exercises in order as they build on each other.

Creating Files & Directories

Creating Files

To create files you can use a variety of different commands or methods, for example:

touch command: The touch command can be used to create a new empty file, but can also create a file with a specific timestamp using the -t datetime option, where datetime is in format [CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss].
Creating a new file using touch:
```
touch new-file-touch.txt
ls -l new-file-touch.txt
```
The date and time stamp of the file display exactly when you created the file.
Creating a new file with a specified date & time stamp using touch:
```
touch -t 202001010830 new-file-touch-datetime.txt
ls -l new-file-touch-datetime.txt
stat -c %y new-file-touch-datetime.txt
```
The date & time stamp of the file display the date & time specified, in this case; 08:30 on 1st Jan 2020.
Text Editors (vi / vim): Using text editors such as vim, you can create new files.
Creating a file using vim:
```
vim new-file-vim.txt
```
Once the new file is open in vim, you can save and quit by typing :wq and hitting Enter. Then run the following to check the file exists:
```
ls -l new-file-vim.txt
```
Redirection (>): Using redirection is the simplest way to create a a new empty file as you can just run > newfile. It can also be used to create a file from the output of any command.
Creating a file using basic redirection:
```
> new-file-redirect.txt
ls -l new-file-redirect.txt
```
Creating a file using redirection of output from a command:
```
df -h > new-file-redirect-command.txt
cat new-file-redirect-command.txt
```
The cat command shows that the content of the new file does contain the output of the df command.

Creating Directories

To create directories you use the mkdir command, which you have been using for the lesson setups if you have been following along. You can use the mkdir command to create a single directory or to create directories and their sub-directories also when using the -p option. The -v option displays verbose output detailing the directory creations.

The -p flag is great for using with scripts, as, unlike running mkdir without it, it will not complain if the directory already exists.

Creating a single directory:

mkdir -v solo-dir

Creating a directory with a sub-directory that has a sub-directory aswell:

mkdir -v -p sub-dirs-within/sub-dir/another-dir/final-dir
ls -lR sub-dirs-within

Notice how the verbose output to mkdir shows all the directories getting created, confirmed by running ls with the -lR options.

Copying Files & Directories

To copy files and directories you use the cp command. You can create a copy of a single file, copy multiple files to another directory and copy directories and their contents also. The -v verbose flag is useful to see the actions that the cp command performs.

Create a copy of a file:

cp -v new-file-touch.txt new-file-touch.txt.copy
ls -l new-file-touch.txt new-file-touch.txt.copy

Notice how the file copy was successful, but the original timestamp was lost for the new file.

cp -v -p new-file-touch.txt new-file-touch.txt.preserved-copy
ls -l new-file-touch.txt new-file-touch.txt.preserved-copy

The -p option is used to preserve the permissions, ownership & timestamps.

Copying multiple files to another directory:

cp -v new-file-touch.txt new-file-touch.txt.copy new-file-touch.txt.preserved-copy solo-dir

This copied the files to the solo-dir folder, however you can copy files to sub-directories also.

cp -v new-file-touch.txt new-file-touch.txt.copy sub-dirs-within/sub-dir/another-dir
ls -lR sub-dirs-within

The ls command shows the files within the another-dir sub-directory.

Copying a directory:

new-dir does not have a trailing /. This means we want to create a copy of solo-dir as new-dir and not copy solo-dir inside of an existing directory called new-dir.

cp -v -r solo-dir new-dir

Notice how the output of the command shows that the solo-dir along with its contents was copied to a directory called new-dir which was created by the cp command.

Copying a directory into another directory:

cp -v -r solo-dir new-dir/

Notice how this time the solo-dir directory was copied inside of the new-dir folder.

Moving Files & Directories

To move files and directories you use the mv command. You can use the mv command to simply rename a file or directory, or you can move files or directories to another location. The -v verbose flag is useful to see the actions that the mv command performs.

Rename a file:

mv -v new-file-touch.txt new-file-touch.txt.renamed

Rename a directory:

mv -v solo-dir solo-dir-renamed

Move a file to another directory:

When moving a file to another directory it is best to always include the / at the end of the directory name, otherwise if the directory does not exist it will just rename the file.

mv -v new-file-vim.txt solo-dir-renamed/

Move multiple files to another directory:

mv -v new-file-redirect.txt new-file-redirect-command.txt solo-dir-renamed/

Move a directory to another directory:

mv -v new-dir sub-dirs-within/

Move multiple directories to another directory:

mv -v sub-dirs-within/new-dir sub-dirs-within/sub-dir ./

Notice how in this example the sub directories are being moved to ./ which represents the current directory. Which can be confirmed with the ls command:

ls -ld new-dir sub-dir

Deleting Files & Directories

To delete files you use the rm command and to delete empty directories you use the rmdir command. However to delete directories that contain files or other directories you will need to use the rm -rf command, with -r being recursive and f meaning force deletion. The -v verbose flag is useful to see the actions that the rm and rmdir commands perform.

Deleting a file:

rm -v new-file-touch.txt.preserved-copy

Deleting multiple files at once:

rm -v new-file-touch*

Notice the use of the * wildcard here to delete all files starting with new-file-touch.

Deleting an empty directory:

rmdir -v sub-dirs-within

Deleting a directory that contains data:

rm -v -rf sub-dir

The output shows the deletion of files and directories.

Deleting multiple directories that contain data:

rm -v -rf new-dir solo-dir-renamed

After completing all of the exercises in this guide, the lessons directory will be empty which you can confirm by running ls -l ~/file-dir-practice.

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