The following steps will show you how to use the black window all hackers use. It might look a bit scary at first, but really, it is just a prompt, waiting for commands from you.

The window, which is usually called the command line, is a text-based application for viewing, handling and manipulating files on your computer (much like e.g. Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac, but without the graphical interface). Other names for the command line are: cmd, prompt, console or terminal.

Each operating system has a slightly different set of commands for the command line. Here is a summary of some useful commands:

These are just a very few of the commands you can run in your command line. To learn more about them, check out the Further Information section below.

ss64.com contains a complete reference of commands for all operating systems.

• Up arrow - rerun previous commands. You can avoid typing the same commands again and again by using the up arrow key to cycle through recently used commands.

• Tab key - the tab key autocompletes directory and file names. For example, if you type dir t and then use TAB, the command line will try to match this to existing files in your current directory and autocomplete the name for you. Meaning, if your directory contains a file called test.txt, typing dir t and TAB will autocomplete to dir test.txt.

• exit - closes your command prompt. This makes sense, right? No need to explain too much...

• cd - allows you to go to another directory. To go to a directory contained within your current directory, type cd subdirectory (where you replace subdirectory with the name of the directory you want to go to) and press enter.

For example: let's say you are in a directory called c:\test with three sub-directories: documents, photos and music.

c
└───test
        documents
        photos
        music

To go from test to the documents subdirectory, simply type cd documents and press enter. You are now in c:\test\documents.

To move back to the c:\test directory (or generally, to move 'up' one level), type cd .. (cd followed by two full stops).

• dir (Windows) / ls (others) - lists files and directories located in your current directory. If you type dir or ls, respectively, you will see the contents of the directory you're currently in. Note that for some commands you can use the * (asterisk) symbol, which stands for all and is often called a wildcard. With this in mind, try typing dir *.txt for Windows or ls *.txt for other OS to only list files that end with .txt.

• copy (Windows) / cp (others) - allows you to copy files from one location to another. To use this command, type copy sourcefile targetfile (where sourcefile is the name/path of the file you want to copy, and targetfile is the name you want to give to the copy you are creating).

For example: if you have the file c:\test\test.txt and you would like to create a copy at c:\windows\test.txt, type:

copy c:\test\test.txt c:\windows\test.txt

• move (Windows) / mv (others) - allows you to move files from one location to another. The syntax you use is the same as for the copy/cp command.

• mkdir - allows you to create a new directory. For example, mkdir temp creates a new directory called temp in the current directory.

• del (Windows) / rm (others) - allows you to delete the specified file. For example, del test.txt deletes the test.txt file from the current directory. !!!ATTENTION!!! Deleting files using del or rm is irrecoverable, meaning deleted files will be gone forever! So, be very careful with this command.