How To Use Mac Terminal
Mac Terminal For Dummies
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Make things happen quickly without touching the mouse

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Text wrapping
Default editor
Foreground processes and background jobs
Folders accessed by developers
Terminal File Listing Home Folder
Create Terminal Aliases
Root user for sudo commands
Create Windows-like shortcuts with parameters using text editor

This tutorial describes how to make use of the macOS Terminal to make your life easier and less frustrating.

What Apple calls the Terminal is what Linux people call the shell console (more specifically, the Bash shell). It’s also called a command-line terminal, abbreviated as CLI.

Information here is often used in interview questions.

Open Terminal (several ways)

On the Mac, the Terminal app is kinda buried, probably perhaps because those who use a MacOS laptop just for social media probably won’t need a Terminal.

But if you’re a developer, it’s hard to get away from using a CLI.

There are different ways to open a Terminal command line.

My preferrence is a way that doesn’t require reaching for a mouse and using the least number of keystrokes:

Press command+space keys (at the same time) to bring up Apple’s Spotlight universial search, then
Type “termin” so “Terminal.app” appears.
Press the space bar to select it.

Alternately, if you prefer moving your mouse:

Click the Finder icon on the app bar.
Click Applications on the left pane.
Click Utilities.
Click Terminal.

PROTIP: If you are at the Finder program (since Yosemite) you can open a Terminal to a folder listed within Finder by pointing your mouse on it, then tapping with two fingers on the touchpad/mousepad.To enable that:

Click the Apple icon, System Preferences..
Press K and select Keyboard.
Click Shortcuts, Services.
Scroll to the Files and Folders section.
Check on New Terminal at Folder.
Close the dialog by clicking the red dot at the upper left corner.

Bash shell invocations

I put in an echo in the various files that macOS executes upon user login, when a new terminal is opened, and when a bash shell is invoked:

When macOS logs in a user, it executes file /etc/profile. That file’s code:

echo ${BASH-no} resolves to /usr/local/bin/bash.

The /etc/bashrc file contains:

The above defines the $PS1 variable which sets the Terminal’s prompt to the left of the cursor.

NOTE: On Ubuntu, instead of /etc/bashrc, the file is /etc/bash.bashrc.

RedHat also executes /etc/profile.d if the shell invoked is an “Interactive Shell” (aka Login Shell) where a user can interact with the shell, i.e. your Terminal bash prompt.

Thus, whatever is specified in /etc/profile is NOT invoked for “non-interactive” shells invoked when a user cannot manually interact with it, i.e. a Bash script execution.

PROTIP: One can change those files, but since operating system version upgrades can replace them without notice, it’s better to create a file that is not supplied by the vendor, and within each user’s $HOME folder: ~/.bash_profile

In other words, file /etc/profile is the system wide version of ~/.bash_profile for all users.

Examples of custom settings include:

export HISTSIZE=1000 # sets the size of .bash_history lines of command history (500 by default)

User Mask for permissions

Wikipedia says umask controls how file permissions are set for newly created files. Please read it for the whole story on this.

To identify the User Mask for permissions:
Since the default is “0022”:-S shows the symbolic equivalent to “0022” for u=user, g=group, o=others :
r is for readable, x is for eXecutable by the user.
To set the User Mask for permissions:
UMASK 077

Within Text Editors/IDEs

Many prefer the terminals built into VS Code and other editors/IDEs.

Text wrapping

This page contains notes for system administrators and developers,who need to control Macs below the UI level, which requiretyping commands into a command-line terminal screen.

To avoid text wrapping, cursor on the right edge to expand the screen width.

Hyper terminal app

Get the .dmg installer from the websitehttps://hyper.is. It’s used by tutorials author Wes Bos.

Unlike Apple’s Terminal, which is closed-source, Hyper is an open-source and extensible terminal emulator. It is available on MacOS, Windows, and Linux because it’s built using Electron (the same platform that powers Atom, Slack, and Brave). So it can be slow.

To customize Hyper, add the name of many packages to its config file ~/.hyper.js. Build an extension based on hyper.is/#extensions-api.

iTerm2 for split pane

Many prefer to install and use iTerm2 instead of the built-in Terminal program.Install iTerm2 using Homebrew:

Terminal does not support but iTerm2 does support dividing the CLI into several rectangular “panes”, each of which is a different terminal session:

split window vertically with Command+D
split window horizontally with Command+Shift+D
Navigate among panes with command-opt-arrow or cmd+[ and cmd+]
Temporarily toggle maximize the current pane (hiding all others) with command-shift-enter
Exit out a pane by typing exit in that pane

Pressing the shortcut again restores the hidden panes.

On Linux, there is the screen command.

See Iterm2 Cheat Sheet of iTerm2 keyboard shortcuts. https://github.com/nobitagit/iterm-cheat-sheet/blob/master/README.md

Alphabetical Commands list

A list of all commands native to macOS is listed alphabetically at https://ss64.com/osx.

Exit

To exit from the Terminal shell:

exit

Get back in for the remainder of this tutorial.

Shutdown

CAUTION: To kill all apps and shutdown a Mac right away (with no warning and no dialog):

sudo shutdown -h now

Text Command Line Bash Shortcuts

These come from the bash terminal on Linux machines here: Press control with your pinkie, then …

control + C = Close processing
control + L = cLear screen
control + A = Go to Beginning of line (as in A to Z)
control + E = Go to End of line (hit E using longest finger)
control + F = Forward cursor
control + B = Backward
control + H = Backspace left of cursor
control + D = Delete right of cursor
control + K = Kill line from under the cursor to the end of the line.
control + U = 'U get out of here' - Clear entire line
control + P = Previous line
control + N = Next line
control + Y = Retrieve line
control + ` = cycle through session windows
control + left = previous session
control + right = previous session

Environment Variables

A big reason to use a command-line terminal is to set environment variables.

Like on PCs, the PATH system environment variable storeswhere the operating system should look to find a particular program to execute.

To see what is already defined:
The listing such as this, which declares the “XPC_FLAGS” system variable:
declare -x XPC_FLAGS=”0x0”
This talks about setting launchd.conf and rebooting.This applies to all users.
To see what is defined:
PROTIP: $PATH must be up

Terminal For Mac