LEMDO: Work in the Command Line (Terminal)

Work in the Command Line (Terminal)

Rationale

Quick definition: The command line is a text-based way of interacting with your computer (DHRI). There are lots of good reasons to learn to work in the Terminal (or command line or command-line interface) of your operating system. One is that it allows you to bypass the graphical user interface (GUI) of your computer. Another (according to a researcher quoted in Nature 590) is that you will feel like a very competent […] cool nerd.

The main reason we require LEMDO users to work in the Terminal is that our Subversion repository can be accessed only via the Terminal. All of the Subversion (SVN) commands are written in the Terminal. Detailed steps for key commands are in documentation pages linked to from the Further Reading section of this page.

We recommend keeping this documentation page bookmarked until you are comfortable working in the command line and until you understand the difference between the generic Terminal commands (cd, mkdir, cd ../) and the specific Subversion commands.

Practice: Open Your Terminal

All operating systems have a command-line interface (Terminal). Before you can work in it, you need to find it.

Mac: Press Cmd (⌘)+Space, then type Terminal (without quotation marks) and press Return

Windows: Press Windows key+r, then type cmd (without quotation marks) and press Enter

Linux: Press Ctrl+Alt+T

Terms and Abbreviations for Working in Terminal

If you are new to working in Terminal, it is helpful to learn some of the terms and abbreviations that we use when talking about Terminal.

Directory: Another way to refer to folders. At LEMDO, we use directory to refer to folders that contain child folders, while we use folder to refer to folders that contain only files.

Tree: Refers to the structure of folders and files that we are working in. Folder structures mimic trees in that there is one main folder (the trunk) that all other folders live in (branch out of). Everything in our LEMDO repository branches off from the main lemdo directory.

Parent: A directory that contains another folder. It is one level closer to the trunk of the tree (the lemdo directory) in our LEMDO repository structure. For example, in this structure: lemdo/data/texts, data is the parent of texts.

Child: A folder immediately contained by another directory. It is one level further from the lemdo directory in our repository structure. For example, in this structure: lemdo/data/texts, texts is the child of data.

Descendant: A folder that is contained by another, but is not its immediate child. For example, in this structure: lemdo/data/texts, texts is the descendant of lemdo.

Up: Moving back towards the main directory (in our case, the lemdo directory) from a child or descendant folder.

Down: Moving into descendant directories from the main directory.

Highest level: The main directory of the repository. For LEMDO, the highest level is the lemdo directory.

Lowest level: The folder that is the parent of whichever file you have been working on. It is the furthest relevant folder from the main directory. For example, if you were working on emdH5_FM.xml, the pathway to that file is lemdo/data/texts/H5/main/emdH5_FM.xml. The highest level would be lemdo and the lowest level would be main.

mkdir: mkdir is a Terminal command that stands for “make directory”. This command is how you will create new directories via your command line. It is functionally the same as creating a new folder in your computer’s file explorer.

cd: cd is a Terminal command that stands for “change directory”. This command is how you will move between levels in the lemdo tree.

Terminal Commands: Reference Table

Action	How to do it
Create a new directory	`mkdir [folder name]`
Move into a directory	`cd [folder name]`
List contents of the current directory	Linux & Mac: `ls` Windows: `dir`
Find out where you are in your folder tree	Linux & Mac: `pwd` (print working directory) Windows: `cd` (although the Terminal in Windows already shows you where you are)
Move back up the tree (i.e. go to the parent directory)	`cd ../`
Move two or more levels back up the tree	`cd ../../` (add as many `../` as you need)
Move up the tree and then down into another folder	`cd ../[folder name]` ¹

Tips for Working in Terminal

Commands in the command line must be typed precisely with the correct capitalization. For example, MyFile.odt is a different file from myfile.odt.

You can recall previous commands, which is useful if you need to re-execute a recent command or make a small modification to a recent command. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to recall previous commands. Press the up arrow key (↑) to reproduce the immediately previous command. Press the up arrow key again as many times as you need to find an earlier command. Press the down arrow key (↓) to move forward through your previous commands.

Other Resources

For a free online tutorial, see Introduction to the Command Line, from the Digital Humanities Research Institute at CUNY.

See also Jeffrey M. Perkel, Five reasons why researchers should learn to love the command line, Nature 590 (2021), 173-174, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00263-0.

Notes

1.For example, if you are in lemdo/data/texts/FV and you want to go to another play, you would type cd ../FBFB.↑

Prosopography

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Mahayla Galliford

Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Nicole Vatcher

Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.) in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was women’s writing in the modernist period.

Rylyn Christensen

Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Glossary

Subversion

“An open-source version control system that allows us to keep, track, and restore every version of every file in the repository.”

Terminal or command line

“The program on your computer that allows you to navigate through your directories and make changes to the files therein.”

Metadata

Authority title	Work in the Command Line (Terminal)
Type of text	Documentation
Publisher	University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series	Linked Early Modern Drama Online
Source	TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
Editorial declaration	n/a
Edition	Released with Linked Early Modern Drama Online 1.0
Encoding description	Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status	prgGenerated
Funder(s)	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
License/availability	This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the editor and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the documentation in the classroom.