Environment, Process and Finding

This module rounds out your everyday terminal toolkit: understanding the
settings your shell runs with, seeing and controlling what’s actually
running on your machine, and finding files and text quickly instead of
hunting through folders by hand.

Why This Matters

Environment variables like PATH quietly control which programs your
terminal can find and run — when a command “isn’t found” or the wrong
version runs, this is almost always why. Knowing how to inspect and kill
processes means you’re never stuck with a frozen program. And find and
grep are two of the most-used commands in any developer’s daily
workflow, letting you locate files and search text without a GUI.

What You’ll Learn

• What a terminal environment is, and how to create, use, and permanently
  save environment variables
• How the PATH variable works and why commands stop working when it’s
  misconfigured
• What a process is, how to list running processes with ps, and how to
  stop one with kill
• How to locate files and folders with find, and search text with
  grep, including flags and basic regular expressions

Outcome

By the end of this module, you’ll be able to configure your shell
environment, manage running processes, and find exactly what you’re
looking for — files or text — quickly.

Let’s continue.