Learning Outcomes

Students will (1) understand file system organization, (2) understand and use both absolute and relative names for files and folders, and (3) be experienced in using the command line to create, move, rename, copy, and delete files and folders.

Reading

Read my notes on the Command Line.

Activities

You’ve heard that data scientists are in demand and would like to practice some skills used by these power users, such as—no kidding—cleaning up bad data. You also like movies, and have found a messed up data set. How perfect! You can use your film knowledge while developing one of the signature talents of power users: the command line.

Initialize a repository

As your job is to fix up some messy data, I’ve provided you the bad data set in a GitHub repository that you will import. At GitHub, select Import Repository. Then:

For Your old repository’s clone URL

Enter https://github.com/rtoal/cmsi-186-lab-1-starter-code

For Your new repository details

Enter the repository name cmsi-186-lab-1.

The import might take a few minutes. When done, clone the repo, change to your working directory, and get ready to work.

Fix things up

Browse the folders and files in the repo and note the problems. Put everything right, using only the command line, and keeping track of the commands you use to fix things up. You may use your computer’s file system browser (File Manager, Explorer, etc.) to observe your activity, but you may not use the browser to create, move, rename, copy, delete, or otherwise modify the file system. Your cleaned data must:

• Include a new genre called drama.
• Include a new movie, StarWarsEmpireStrikesBack, to the scifi genre.
• Include a new file with a picture of Carrie Fisher, in the StarWarsEmpireStrikesBack movie. Obtain the picture from the web using the curl command
• Have all movies in their primary genre, e.g., E.T. in scifi; The Ten Commandments, Dr. Zhivago, Gone With the Wind, and The Sound of Music drama, The Exorcist in horror; Jaws and Titanic in adventure; and Snow White in animation. (If you want Titanic to be both adventure and drama, research how to make soft links—don’t copy.)
• Have each of the actors in the right movies. Even though you are good with film history, you might have to do some searching—not everyone can know everything.
• Have the poser (someone who is not an actor in any of the listed movies) deleted from the data set.
• Include at least one new movie of your choice added to an existing genre.
• Include at least one new actor added to your new movie. (Optionally, you can add more movies and more actors, and even add new actors to existing movies.)

Record the sequence of commands you used to organize the files; you’ll be responsible for listing the commands as part of the required submission for this lab (instructions are below). Don’t worry about efficiency—you should feel free to explore! Include commands such as ls or pwd that helped you to figure out where everything was located.

Finally, you must update the README.md file that you imported. The imported README states that the files are messed up; your fixed up README should be rewritten and state something along the lines of the repository being a set of folders and files for movies that were fixed up as part of a command line exercise.

What to turn in

Online:

• Your new repository, cmsi-186-lab-1, should be as specified in the instructions.

On hardcopy or email, answers to the following:

1. The list of commands you used, starting with git clone, that you used to carry out the required lab activities. Your command list should (1) include a few cd commands and (2) demonstrate that you can use both absolute paths and relative paths.
2. Assuming the following folder hierarchy, give the commands to carry out the following tasks (these small exercises help to reinforce what you have learned):

             /
             ├── g1
             │   └── m1
             │       ├── a
             │       ├── b
             │       └── c
             └── g2
                 ├── m2
                 └── m3
                     └── d
   

   1. Make the folder m1 current
   2. With m1 as the current folder, list the contents of folder m3 (using relative paths)
   3. With m1 as the current folder, list the contents of folder m3 (using absolute paths)
   4. With m1 as the current folder, copy the file d into g1 (using relative paths)
   5. With m2 as the current folder, delete the file b (using relative paths)
3. Number of hours spent working on this lab.
4. (Optional) Feel free to let me know what you liked/disliked about this lab, what you learned, etc.