$ sudo and $ curl - What is this?

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1

I’m embarassed to ask this question because it makes me realize I’m far behind but I need to better understand everything relating to this whole $ sudo, $ curl, whatever, stuff.

I grew up with DOS. Now I use OSX. I know very little about the terminal or Unix. Everywhere I go there’s an assumption of an understanding of those topics and I don’t get it. Where should I start to better understand this topic? What is this topic called? I’m confused by it.

For example I’m reading about meteor.js and the first thing it mentions at the top of the page is:

$ curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh
2

That had me confused the first time I saw it too.

Have you opened a CLI yet? I’v never used OSX, only DOS, but AFAIK

$ curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh

would be the equivalent of the DOS

> curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh
3

I actually haven’t used DOS in years, since before Win95, when I was a kid. So basically I only remember how to navigate through folders, execute files, and a few other commands. I don’t know how that works with these other tools. Do you know where I can turn to in order to understand all of these concepts?

4

The first step is opening up the CLI
Most apps that I’ve seen have a “help” that will show you what commands you can use to do what and what the syntax is to use with each command.
Once you open the CLI try typing the string help and click the enter key.