Standard Shell Commands
The system comes with some slightly updated legacy commands (typically based on the versions in xv6). These mostly work as in other operating systems:
- ls (list files)
- cat (concatenate files)
- mkdir (make directory)
- rm (remove)
Alternative Shells
The system includes two different command line “shell” programs, one based on xv6 code and the other based on public domain code from elsewhere.
Both are currently very minimalist but are easy to update for more specialised needs!
Text Editor
The text editor accessible from the command line is specially written for the OS and is called numbered.
This editor is currently not full featured but is very simple, just type a line number followed by a line of text to replace that line, and type help for info about other commands. This system operates similarly to a BASIC editor and is also designed for some scripting extensions but scripting support is not fully enabled.
This editor is usually just enough for editing a configuration file but isn’t yet designed for full featured editing!
Programming Tools
The system includes a simple Smalltalk style environment and other tools for programming. These are beyond the scope of this short introduction but tools like the Smalltalk VM will print some usage information when run without options.
NOTE: The C compiler is not fully ported to run from on top of the OS yet, but an early (partly working) port may be included in some builds.
Disk Usage Statistics
The system supports multiple disks and will usually boot with two RAM disks for demonstration. Paths can be separated with forwards or backwards slash, and drive labels can be indicated using the pattern “NAME:”, for example:
cat BOOT:/README
The drives program can be used to print filesystem statistics, and may also configure other hardware in the future.
Archiving & Compression
The system comes with some minimalist archiving & compression support thanks to the new package manager.
This tool uses simple purpose-built formats (not .zip/.tar/.gz/etc.) making it’s implementation much more lightweight than legacy tools which have to be compatible with multiple format versions.