ls *.c

Computers are structured in files and directories. Files and folders and sub-folders and sub-files all in a hierarchical structure starting from the very base (root) of your computer and extending out.

When I type the command ls into my shell — user interface to interact with my computer’s operating system — it causes a process to begin. The ls process begins searching in the PATH environment variable.

The processes are stored in the /usr/bin which is found by searching through the computers list of directories; the $PATH. Once found, ls is executed through the exec file.

The * character is called a star wildcard. The star wildcard is used to represent characters. It can represent all single characters or any string. In this case, it would represent all files in the current directory with the extension .c .

When I press return, it would return a list of all files in my current directory with the extension .c . If none are found, it would return the command back to me with the message that no files were found.