UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, TAXILA

FACULTY OF TELECOMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION ENGINEERING

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

Operating Systems
Experiment 4
Introduction to VI Editor and Shell Programming –I

CLO 2. Use modern tools and languages.

CLO 3. Demonstrate an original solution of problem under discussion.
CLO 4. Work individually as well as in teams
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Implementing Linux Commands

Introduction to Vi Editor

Text related commands

1) find
 The find command is used to locate files in a directory.

 The –name option: This lists out the specific files in directory. Wild cards can be used.

Examples

$find

 Displays all the files present in a directory

$find –name ‘*.txt’

 Displays all the files (.txt) type present in a directory

2) history
 List all commands typed so far.
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3) more FILE
 Display the contents of FILE, pausing after each screen.

 There are several keys which control the output once a screen has been printed.

 <enter> Will advance the output one line at a time.

 <space bar> Will advance the output by another full screen.

 "q" Will quit and return you to the Linux prompt.

Examples

more +3 myfile.txt

 Display the contents of file myfile.txt, beginning at line 3.

more +/"hope" myfile.txt

 Display the contents of file myfile.txt, beginning at the first line containing the string
"hope".

4) less FILE
 "less" is a program like "more".

 but allows backward movement in the file as well as forward movement.

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Absolute path and relative path

 Generally, if a command is given it will affect only the current working directory.

 For example, the following command will create a directory named curr in the current

working directory.

$ mkdir curr

 The directory can also be created elsewhere in the file system using the absolute and relative

path.

1. Absolute Path
 If the path is given with respect to the root directory, then it is called full path or

absolute path.

$ mkdir /home/it2006/it2k601/newdir

 The full path always starts with the /, which represents the root directory.

Relative Path
 If the path is given with respect to the current working directory or parent directory,

then it is called relative path.

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FACULTY OF TELECOMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION ENGINEERING

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

$ mkdir ../newdir

 The above command will create a directory named newdir in the parent directory.

What about the above command?

$ mkdir ./first/newdir

 The above command will create a directory named “newdir” inside “first directory”,

 where the directory first is in the current working directory.

Note:

 “.” Represents current directory

 “..” represents parent directory.

PIPES AND FILTERS

 In Linux, commands were created to perform single tasks only.

 If we want to perform multiple tasks we can go for pipes and filters.

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PIPES

 The Pipe is a command in Linux that lets you use two or more commands such that

output of one command serves as input to the next.

 In short, the output of each process directly as input to the next one like a pipeline.

 The symbol '|' denotes a pipe.

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 Pipes help you mash-up two or more commands at the same time and run them
consecutively.
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The 'grep' command

 It will scan the document for the desired information

 and present the result in a format you want.

Syntax:

grep search_string
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 Following options can be used with this command.

Option Function

-v Shows all the lines that do not match the searched string

-c Displays only the count of matching lines

-n Shows the matching line and its number

-i Match both (upper and lower) case

-l Shows just the name of the file with the string

 Let us try the first option '-i' on the same file use above -

 Using the 'i' option grep has filtered the string 'a' (case-insensitive) from the all the lines.
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The 'sort' command

 This command helps in sorting out the contents of a file alphabetically.

 The syntax for this command is:

sort Filename

 Consider the contents of a file.

 Using the sort command

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 There are extensions to this command as well, and they are listed below.

Option Function

-r Reverses sorting

-n Sorts numerically

-f Case insensitive sorting

 The example below shows reverse sorting of the contents in file 'abc'.

FILTERS

 are used to extract the lines, which contain a specific pattern

 to arrange the contents of a file in a sorted order.

 to replace existing characters with some other characters, etc.

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 Linux has a lot of filter commands like awk, grep, sed, spell, and wc.

 A filter takes input from one command, does some processing, and gives output.

 When you pipe two commands then the "filtered " output of the first command is given to

the next.

1. Sort filter
 The sort filter arranges the input taken from the standard input in alphabetical order.

 The sort command when used with “-r” option will display the input taken from the

keyboard in the reverse alphabetical order.

 When used with “-n” option arranges the numbers, alphabets and special characters per their

ASCII value.

2. Grep filter
 Used to search for a particular pattern from a file or from standard input

 Display those lines on the standard output.

 Grep stands for “Global search for regular expression”.

grep [option(s)] pattern [file(s)]

grep ‘Zain’ pstudent.txt

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 Where the given pattern is searched inside the lines contained in the named files.

 The objects listed inside the square brackets are optional.

 When the options and input file are not specified, then the grep command searches for

standard input (which is by default the standard text typed on the keyboard)

 Each line that happens to constitute the given pattern is displayed.

What is the VI editor?

 The VI editor is the most popular and classic text editor in the Linux family.

 Below, are some reasons which make it a widely used editor –

Installing VIM on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install vim

 It is available in almost all Linux Distributions

 It works the same across different platforms and Distributions

 It is user-friendly.

 Hence, millions of Linux users love it and use it for their editing needs

 Nowadays, there are advanced versions of the vi editor available, and the most popular one

is VIM which is Vi Improved.

 To work on VI editor, you need to understand its operation modes.

 They can be divided into two main parts.

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SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

1. Command mode:

 The vi editor opens in this mode, and it only understands commands.

 In this mode, you can, move the cursor and cut, copy, paste the text.

 This mode also saves the changes you have made to the file.

 Commands are case sensitive.

 You should use the right letter case.

2. Insert mode:

 This mode is for inserting text in the file.

 You can switch to the Insert mode from the command mode by pressing 'i' on the

keyboard

 Once you are in Insert mode, any key would be taken as an input for the file on which

you are currently working.

 To return to the command mode and save the changes you have made you need to

press the Esc key .

 To save and quit the editor press “:wq”

 to exit VI editor press “:q!” on command mode.

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Starting the vi editor

 To launch the VI Editor -Open the Terminal (CLI) and type

vi <filename_NEW> or <filename_EXISTING>

 And if you specify an existing file

 The editor would open it for you to edit.

 Else, you can create a new file.

UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, TAXILA
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VI Editing commands

 i - Insert at cursor (goes into insert mode)

 a - Write after cursor (goes into insert mode)

 A - Write at the end of line (goes into insert mode)

 ESC - Terminate insert mode

 u - Undo last change

 U - Undo all changes to the entire line

 o - Open a new line (goes into insert mode)

 dd - Delete line

 3dd - Delete 3 lines.

 D - Delete contents of line after the cursor

 C - Delete contents of a line after the cursor and insert new text. Press ESC key to end

insertion.

 dw - Delete word

 4dw - Delete 4 words

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 cw - Change word

 x - Delete character at the cursor

 r - Replace character

 R - Overwrite characters from cursor onward

 s - Substitute one character under cursor continue to insert

 S - Substitute entire line and begin to insert at the beginning of the line

 ~ - Change case of individual character

Note:

 You should be in the "command mode" to execute these commands.

 VI editor is case-sensitive so make sure you type the commands in the right letter-case.

 Make sure you press the right command otherwise you will end up making undesirable

changes to the file.

 You can also enter the insert mode by pressing a, A, o, as required.

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Moving within a file

 k - Move cursor up

 j - Move cursor down

 h - Move cursor left

 l - Move cursor right

You need to be in the command mode to move within a file.

The default keys for navigation are mentioned below else;

You can also use the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Saving and Closing the file

 Shift+zz - Save the file and quit

 :w - Save the file but keep it open

 :q - Quit without saving

 :wq - Save the file and quit

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 You should be in the command mode to exit the editor and save changes to the file.

Running Commands

 The vi has the capability to run commands from within the editor.

 To run a command, you only need to go to the command mode and type

:! command

 For example, if you want to check whether a file exists before you try to save your file with

that filename

 you can type :

:! ls

 you will see the output of ls on the screen

 You can press any key (or the command's escape sequence) to return to your vi session.
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Make the file executable using chmod command.

 When we create a file, by default it is created with

 read and write permission turned on

 execute permission turned off.

 A file can be made executable using chmod.

$ chmod u+x script_file

or

$ chmod u+x /home/user/show.sh

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FACULTY OF TELECOMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION ENGINEERING

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Task 1:

 Get into the vi editor and type some text then save the file with the name

my_first_linux_file.

Task 2:

1. Open the given file in VI editor.

2. Change the subject “digital logic design” into “Object oriented

Programming” while in command mode.

3. Also, change “programming fundamentals” into “Operating System”

while in command mode.

4. Lastly remove the lines “It is a bore subject. It is not helpful for us.” from

line 3 while staying in command mood.

5. Save and run the updated file in VI editor.

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FACULTY OF TELECOMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION ENGINEERING

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

Task 3:
Make a Shell Script that make use of pipe command.

1. Firstly, list the word counts of present working directory.

2. Next make use of pipe command for the word count of already created

file after sorting in single command.

Task 4:

 Make a shell script that highlights only the lines in a text file that do not

contain the character 'a',

 the result should be in reverse order.