Command Line Cheat Sheet

See also GitHub's Markdown Guide.

Useful bash and git

Command	Action
<cmd> -h	print the help documentation for a command, showing usage information and options
cd	change directory
cd ..	up one directory
pwd	current working directory
ls	list everything in current directory (use -a to also show all files including hidden, -l for a long list including permissions and ownership info, -1 ("dash one") to display the output with 1 item on each line)
wc -l <file>	use the word count command with the -l lines option to list the number of lines in a file
du <dirname>/	calculate and show how much disk usage is consumed by a directory (use -h to make it human-readable, i.e. report in MB, GB or whatever units are most appropriate, and -s for summary of all the contents together rather than each item individually)
Ctrl+R	search for command (will pop up bck-i-search:)
rm <target>	remove a file (or folder with -r). Beware when using rm -rf <folder> to force the recursive removal of all contents in a folder, which cannot be undone unless there is a backup.
<cmd1> | <cmd2>	The "pipe" operator (|) feeds the output of the first command (cmd1) to the input of the second command (cmd2). For example, show the total number of files in a directory with ls -1 <dir> | wc -l

Git-Specific

Command	Action
git log	list of commits with author, date, time (type q to leave)
git log --oneline	list of just commits (ID, location, message), type q to leave
git status	status of local vs remote repo (commits, ignored files, etc), shows changed files that git is tracking and that git is not tracking
git rm <target>	remove file (or folder with -r) from repo and filesystem (or just from the repo and not filesystem with --cached) cache file ex: git rm -r --cached __pycache__
git mv <file> <folder>	move file to folder or rename: git mv <filename> <new_filename>
git branch	list branches, current branch has * in front and is green
git checkout -b <branch>	create new branch and check it out
git checkout <branch>	checkout branch
git branch -d <branch>	delete branch

Pro tip: Simplify your git history

• Use git mv to rename a file so that it is tracked as a rename (with or without changes).
• If you rename a file then git add its parent directory, the diff will show the deletion of the original file and addition of a "completely new" file, even if nothing has changed. This makes reviewing changes much more complicated than necessary.

Usual Process

After making changes to a file on a branch, check the status of your current working branch (with git status). Then, you "add" the file, state what is new about the file ("commit the change"), and push the file from your local copy of the repo to the remote copy:

git add <filename>

git commit -m "Changed x,y,z"

git push

Pro tip: Check the stage

After using git add <folder> or git add <regex> (a pattern match), run git status to ensure that all intended files--and only intended files--are staged for commit.

Note

If you need to update your branch with changes from the remote main, first switch to the branch, then set pull from main instead of the current branch, as below.

git checkout <branch>       

git pull origin main