Here are two hints for making life easier while moving back and forth between the Mac's Aqua GUI and Unix's CLI. These aren't brain surgery caliper hints, but I have found them to be very useful. Hopefully some of your other readers will also. Enjoy.
Finder accessible UNIX folders: This first hint is just another alternative to several other hints (1, 2, 3, 4) that have been posted here before.
As with many OS X users, I switch back and forth between the Mac's Aqua GUI and the Unix CLI many times a day. There are often times when I am in the Finder that I wish I could see certain unix files and folders (but don't what to expose all of them to everyone). Below you will find a simple "stupid pet trick" shell script that creates Finder accessible aliases (symbolic links, actually) to several common unix directories and places them in a folder called "unix:"
#!/bin/csh
if !( -d 'unix' ) then
/bin/mkdir 'unix'
endif
/bin/ln -s '/usr' 'unix/usr'
/bin/ln -s '/sbin' 'unix/sbin'
/bin/ln -s '/private/tmp' 'unix/tmp'
/bin/ln -s '/private/var' 'unix/var'
/bin/ln -s '/private/etc' 'unix/etc'
/bin/ln -s '/bin' 'unix/bin'
/bin/ln -s '/opt' 'unix/opt'
# FOR THOSE THAT HAVE FINK INSTALLED
/bin/ln -s '/sw' 'unix/sw'
[robg adds: Make sure you run this script from your home directory, as the "unix" directory will be created wherever you execute the script...]
alias cpm "/usr/local/bin/pcpmac"
alias mvm "/usr/local/bin/pmvmac"
If you have the Developer Tools installed, you could also alternatively alias to "/Developer/Tools/CpMac" and "/Developer/Tools/MvMac," respectively.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030422184737624