Where can I find simple Unix commands for Mac's Terminal online?

Here are some simply commands.

But if you’re trying to cancel an operation, your best bet might be to type “top” and return, and find the process that you want to kill. Take not if its PID, the four digit number on the left, and then key control-C. This will exit the top. Then, type kill and then the PID. For example, kill 1234. Then hit return. This will kill your process.

thanks! i’ve got it.

Sure thing!

i have a small book, to be precise this one, and it’s really nifty,easy and useful. i like working in the terminal, and this book made me like it even more :)

If you want to use a GUI in the future for this sort of thing, there’s Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Be sure the show drop-down list at the top says “All Processes”, scroll through the list to find the one you’re interested in, click on it, and then click the Quit stop sign.

I’d recommend reading this Introduction to Linux (also available as a PDF).

Although Mac OS X’s kernel, Darwin, is technically a derivative of FreeBSD, not Linux, they both conform to the POSIX 1003 standard, which means most basic commands will work in both the Mac OS X Terminal and a Linux terminal.

May I also recommend the killall command for stopping a runaway process (killall takes a process name instead of a pid, so it’s a little more user friendly).

Also, if kill or killall aren’t working try adding -9 to the command, which sends a SIGKILL instead of a SIGTERM, causing the program to terminate immediately.

Once you get past this particular problem, and want more command-line goodness…

Rixstep’s CLIX utility is kinda spiffy. It has common command-line items encapsulated as clickable tasks. The idea is that by using “saved” commands, you reduce the risk of mis-typing and screwing something up. The challenge is that you can create your own… so be careful. ;-)