I went over things in class a bit quickly, so I'll try to summarize the main points, as well as introduce some things that I missed.
First, one subtlety that many miss when starting off working in Unix and using IDL is where certain tasks should be done. This is not unexpected, considering that it all gets thrown at you together. But basically, when working in Unix, you'll be changing directories, opening files in emacs, and starting IDL. Once in IDL, you compile and run programs, or work interactively on the command line.
Unix Commands
ls - lists the files in a directory
cd [directory]- changes directory to whatever is specified in the call. cd
.. will take you up one level, and cd ~ will take you back home.
mkdir [directory] - creates a directory
rm [filename] - removes a file
rmdir [directory] - removes an empty directory
emacs [filename] - opens a text file in emacs, or creates a file if no
existing file of the name specified.
man [command] - brings up the manual page for commands like ls and cd, so
you can read a description and about modifying arguments. To move down the
page in the manual, press space bar, and to get out of it press q.
IDL Commands
.run or .r [filename] - compiles and runs a program
int(arg) - converts an argument, arg, to an integer
string(arg) - converts an argument, arg, to a string