mkdir makes a folder. touch makes a file.
Moving around is half of it. The other half is making things. Two commands cover most of it.
mkdir
mkdir stands for "make directory." Give it a name, it makes a folder
with that name, inside wherever you're standing:
mkdir projects
Run ls afterward and projects is in the listing. You just made a
folder by typing eight characters. No right-click, no "New Folder", no
renaming an "untitled folder." It's the kind of small thing that adds
up once it's a habit.
You can make several at once by listing names with spaces:
mkdir drafts final archive
Three folders, one line. This is the repeatability thing from the overview, in its smallest form.
touch
touch makes a new, empty file:
touch notes.txt
Run ls and notes.txt is there: a real file, empty, ready for you
to open in any editor. The .txt part is the file extension, the same
.txt, .pdf, .xlsx you already know. You pick the name and the
extension; touch just creates it.
(touch has a second job, updating a file's timestamp, which is where
the odd name comes from. You can ignore that. For you, touch means
"make an empty file.")
Try both
In your terminal: mkdir practice, then cd practice to step inside,
then touch hello.txt, then ls to see your new file sitting in your
new folder. You just built a small piece of a filesystem by hand. That
is the entire job.
mkdir makes a folder. touch makes a file.
Moving around is half of it. The other half is making things. Two commands cover most of it.
mkdir
mkdir stands for "make directory." Give it a name, it makes a folder
with that name, inside wherever you're standing:
mkdir projects
Run ls afterward and projects is in the listing. You just made a
folder by typing eight characters. No right-click, no "New Folder", no
renaming an "untitled folder." It's the kind of small thing that adds
up once it's a habit.
You can make several at once by listing names with spaces:
mkdir drafts final archive
Three folders, one line. This is the repeatability thing from the overview, in its smallest form.
touch
touch makes a new, empty file:
touch notes.txt
Run ls and notes.txt is there: a real file, empty, ready for you
to open in any editor. The .txt part is the file extension, the same
.txt, .pdf, .xlsx you already know. You pick the name and the
extension; touch just creates it.
(touch has a second job, updating a file's timestamp, which is where
the odd name comes from. You can ignore that. For you, touch means
"make an empty file.")
Try both
In your terminal: mkdir practice, then cd practice to step inside,
then touch hello.txt, then ls to see your new file sitting in your
new folder. You just built a small piece of a filesystem by hand. That
is the entire job.