Linux GUI utilities provide an easy “point-and-click” method of doing Linux administration tasks, but they are time-consuming and awkward to use. You can run a simple Linux command to do the equivalent task in a fraction of the time it would take to use a Linux GUI utility.

When you get Linux training, be sure that it is focused on how to use Linux commands. Also, if you are interested in getting Linux certification, you need to know how to use Linux commands to be able to pass, not Linux GUI utilities. Linux Tips - How to Use Linux “Patterns” (Linux Wildcard characters)

Some Linux documentation uses the term “pattern” to refer to Linux wildcard characters.

Wildcard characters are used in a “pattern” to cause a Linux command to work on multiple items, such as multiple directories and files in the Linux file system.

The two Linux wildcard characters are the * (asterisk) and ? (question mark).

Using an * (asterisk) with a Linux Command

An * (asterisk) is used in a pattern to represent “all” characters of an item (directory or file).

The Linux command below shows an example of the using the cp (copy) command to copy all (because of the * without any other letters or numbers) files in the current directory into the directory named memos.

]# cp * memos

Linux Tips: Keep in mind that Linux commands are “case sensitive”. Always type the letters in upper or lower case, as shown.

Linux Tips: Also, be sure to use spaces where they are shown. For example, in the Linux command above, you need a space (just a single space) between cp and the * and you need a single space between the * and memos.

The * (Linux wildcard character) can be combined with one or more letters at the front of it or after it.

The following Linux command is an example of the using the cp (copy) command to copy all files in the current directory beginning with the letter r into the directory named memos.

]# cp r* reports

The Linux command below copies all files ending in “sxw” into the directory named weekly.

]# cp *.sxw weekly

The next Linux command copies all files containing “mem” (anywhere in the file name) into the directory named monthly.

]# cp *mem* monthly

Using a ? (question mark) with a Linux Command

The ? (question mark) is used in a pattern to represent a single character.

The Linux command below shows an example of the using the mv (move) command to move files that have a single character and end in “cfg” into the directory named june.

]# mv ?.cfg june

The following Linux command moves all files beginning with “month”, and having two characters after “month”, and ending in “sxw”, into the folder named years.

]# mv month??.sxw years

Written by Clyde Boom.

Linux is an operating system much like Windows and MacOSs, but is free and adaptable by any of its users.

Linux is an operating system, a piece of software that interfaces with the computer’s hardware on one side and the user (or programs being run by the user) on the other. Two common examples of operating systems are the ubiquitous Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS. Linux is a member of a family of operating systems based on one developed in the early 1970’s at Bell Labs. This ancestral operating system was referred to as UNIX (a thinly veiled pun on a previous multi-organization operating system project Bell Labs was part of called MULTICS). UNIX was originally not a commercial product and was spread throughout governmental agencies, educational institutions, and other areas freely. The fact that the system was open (i.e. anyone running it could examine the inner workings, learn from them, and modify them as needed) gave rise to a culture of computer users accustomed to freely available, powerful tools.

Once the inevitable effort began to commercialize UNIX, non-corporate groups arose to keep the open nature of the early UNIX community alive. The foremost group, formed in the early 1980’s by Richard M. Stallman (more commonly referred to as RMS) was the GNU organization (Gnu’s Not Unix, so named to avert potential legal trouble from the owners of the UNIX trademark). The GNU organization began efforts to create a fully compatible “Unix-like” operating system and suite of tools.

In the early 1990’s, a young Finnish computer science graduate student studying in Helsinki named Linus Torvalds decided to create his own implementation of the UNIX operating system. As he was a graduate student with limited fiscal resources, his implementation was designed to run on the cheap computer hardware he had available (an Intel 80386-based machine), and he used the tools made by the GNU organization to build the foundation for his new operating system (which was named Linux, for Linus’s Unix). Linus soon posted to various newsgroups on the Internet about his new project and opened the source to outside participation. Linus’s kernel of an operating system, with the contributions of thousands of computer enthusiasts across the world collaborating through the Internet and using the freely available GNU tools, blossomed soon into a fully featured UNIX implementation running on many kinds of hardware (Intel, PowerPC, Sparc, and many others).

Linux has all the industrial strength operating system features honed over the thirty year lifespan of UNIX, including very stable operation, high performance networking facilities, the ability to multitask efficiently across many programs and many simultaneous users, finely-tuned security mechanisms, and many others. In addition to Linux’s numerous technical strengths, it possesses a large and very active user community that tends to be very supportive of new users.

Linux is used today on machines ranging from handheld computers, to embedded instrumentation, to personal workstations, to the largest mainframes available from IBM. It is available free of charge through the Internet, or for a modest fee on other media (most frequently CD-ROM disks). Thousands of applications ranging from web servers to database engines and programming tools, to word processors to 3d first person shooter games and the popular Netscape web browser, are also available for Linux, many at no cost like their host operating system. Companies and volunteer organizations package up the many components of Linux and a broad selection of the available software into convenient “distributions”, each of which has it’s own individual flavor (analogous to British English and Texan English, each is English, but each has slight differentiating nuances).