Among those who work with Linux, the command’ pwd’ is very helpful that tells the directory you are in, starting from the root directory (/). For Linux newbies, who may get lost amid the wide variety of directories found on the command line, ‘pwd’ (Print Working Directory) comes to the rescue. ‘pwd ‘stands for ‘print working directory’ As you can tell, the command ‘pwd ‘prints where the user is currently at. It prints the current directory name, combined with the complete path, with the root folder listed first. This manual command is built into the shell and is available on most of the shells.
If both ‘-L ‘and ‘-P’ options are used, option ‘L ‘is taken into priority. If a choice isn’t specified at the prompt, pwd will only traverse symbolic links, i.e., take option -P into consideration. Using the pwd command, we will demonstrate how to identify your current working directory.
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What is the working directory?
The working directory is that in which the user is currently working. When you are working in the command prompt each time, you are in a directory. The default directory in which a Linux system opens when it is first booted is a user’s home directory. Change directories by using the cd command to delete any file from the current working directory (root directory), you would type:
$ cd /tmp
If you have a customized shell prompt, the path to your current working directory may be displayed.
user@host:/tmp#
Copy
pwd Command
The pwd command is “print working directory.” It is one of the essential and most commonly used Linux commands. When this command is invoked, the complete path to the current working directory will be displayed. The /pwd command is a command introduced in most modern shells such as bash and zsh. The standalone/bin/pwd is not the same as the /bin/pwd executable. The type command lets you display all files containing the “pwd” string.
$ type -a pwd
pwd refers to the shell builtin.
pwd is /bin/pwd
From the output, you can see the built-in Bash function ‘pwd’ has priority over the Bash standalone program and is used whenever you enter ‘pwd.’ If you wish to use the /bin/pwd standalone executable, enter the full path you saved the binary file how to change your current directory.
To find out the current directory, type pwd in your terminal and press return.
$ pwd
The resulting outputs will look similar to this.
/home/linuxcent
The pwd command determines the path of the PWD environment variable. The final output will be the same if you write:
$ echo $PWD /home/linuxcent
The pwd command accepts only two arguments:
- -L (—logical) – Do not resolve symlinks.
- -P (—physical) – Display the physical directory without any symbolic links.
If no passphrase is specified, pwd behaves as if the -L option is specified.
To illustrate the operation of the -P option, I will create a directory and symlink.
$ mkdir /tmp/directoryln $ -s /tmp/directory /tmp/symlink
Now, if you want navigate to the /tmp/symlink directory and you type pwd in your terminal:
$ pwd
The output shows your current working directory: /tmp/symlink
If you run the same command using -P option: $ pwd -P
The command will print the directory to which the symlink points to: /tmp/directory
Conclusion
The working directory is the current directory that your terminal is in. The pwd command lets you know where you are right now. If you have any kind of issues or comments, we would be delighted to hear them.