CS 111: Introduction to Computer Science

Getting to know Unix

Do this by class time Wednesday, September 16

Go to one of the Math/CS labs (CMC304 and CMC306 are the two we use most often in CS classes) and choose a computer. All of the Math/CS computers are set up to allow you to boot into either Windows or MacOS. For this class, you will be using MacOS. If the computer you choose is showing a Mac login screen, go ahead and log in using your usual Carleton user name and password. Otherwise, restart the computer and choose Mac when you're given a choice.

Once you have logged in to your Mac account, work through Typographical Conventions, Introduction to the UNIX Operating System, and Tutorials 1-4 of this Unix tutorial. This tutorial was originally written at the University of Surrey (note the British spellings of "behaviour" and "customise," for example), and has been lightly edited to match what we do at Carleton.

By the end of the tutorial, you should be able to walk comfortably through the following steps:

• Login to your account on a Macintosh (your own or one of the Macs in the CS labs on the third floor of the CMC).
• Launch Terminal.
• Create a subdirectory of your home directory to contain your work for a CS 111 assignment, say "assignment1".
• Change directories to your new directory.
• Launch TextWrangler or some other text editor and create a simple python program containing:

  print 'hello, world!'

• Save your program as "hello.py" in the new directory.
• Back in the Terminal, run your program with the command "python hello.py".

Bring questions to class on Wednesday.

There is nothing to hand in for this assignment.