Practice Questions for Working with Files and Directories

From Software Carpentry

1. After running the following commands, you realize you put the files sucrose.dat and maltose.dat into the wrong folder. They should’ve been placed in the raw folder.

$ ls -F

analyzed/ raw/

$ ls -F analyzed

fructose.dat glucose.dat maltose.dat sucrose.dat

$ cd analyzed

Fill in the blanks to move these files to the raw/ folder

$ mv sucrose.dat maltose.dat ../raw

2. Suppose you created a plain-text file in your current directory to contain a list of the statistical tests you will need to do to analyze your data, and named it: statstics.txt�After creating and saving this file you realize you misspelled the filename! You want to correct the mistake, which of the following commands could you use to do so?

1. cp statstics.txt statistics.txt
2. mv statstics.txt statistics.txt
3. mv statstics.txt .
4. cp statstics.txt .

3. What is the output of the closing ls command in the sequence shown below

$ pwd

/Users/Jamie/data

$ ls

proteins.dat

$ mkdir recombined

$ mv proteins.dat recombined/

$ cp recombined/proteins.dat ../proteins-saved.dat

$ ls

1. proteins-saved.dat recombined
2. recombined
3. proteins.dat recombined
4. proteins-saved.dat

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4. When run in the molecules directory, which ls command(s) will produce this output?��ethane.pdb methane.pdb

1. ls *t*ane.pdb
2. ls *t?ne.*
3. ls *t??ne.pdb
4. ls ethane.*

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5. How do you go from the first directory structure to the second using the commands below?

$ cp *dataset* backup/datasets

$ cp ____calibration____ backup/calibration

$ cp 2015-___-___ send_to_bob/all_november_files/

$ cp ___ send_to_bob/all_datasets_created_on_a_23rd/

https://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/03-create/index.html#more-on-wildcards

6. You are working on a project and see that your files aren’t very well organized:

$ ls -F

analyzed/ fructose.dat raw/ sucrose.dat

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The fructose.dat and sucrose.dat files contain output from your data analysis. What command(s) covered in this lesson does she need to run so that the commands below will produce the output shown?

$ ls -F

analyzed/ raw/

$ ls analyzed

fructose.dat sucrose.dat

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https://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/03-create/index.html#organizing-directories-and-files

7. Which set(s) of commands will make this file directory structure?

1. $ mkdir 2016-05-20

$ mkdir 2016-05-20/data

$ mkdir 2016-05-20/data/processed

$ mkdir 2016-05-20/data/raw

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2. $ mkdir 2016-05-20

$ cd 2016-05-20

$ mkdir data

$ cd data

$ mkdir raw processed

3. $ mkdir 2016-05-20/data/raw

$ mkdir 2016-05-20/data/processed

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4. $ mkdir -p 2016-05-20/data/raw

$ mkdir –p 2016-05-20/data/processed

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5. $ mkdir 2016-05-20

$ cd 2016-05-20

$ mkdir data

$ mkdir raw processed

https://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/03-create/index.html#reproduce-a-folder-structure

Answers (see this page for more detailed explanations)

1. mv sucrose.dat maltose.dat ../raw
2. b) mv statstics.txt statistics.txt
3. b) recombined
4. c) ls *t??ne.pdb
5. These commands:
1. cp *calibration.txt backup/calibration
2. cp 2015-11-* send_to_bob/all_november_files/
3. cp *-23-dataset* send_to_bob/all_datasets_created_on_a_23rd/
6. mv *.dat analyzed
7. a, b, and d

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