Elementary survival guide for the UNIX terminal. This guide assumes the bash shell is used.
A good reference for computer terms can be found at Computer Hope.
A shell or command-line interpreter is a simple textual interface allowing users to execute commands on a UNIX system. Typically, a shell displays the Command Prompt and allows users to type in commands which will be execute by the press of the return key.
A commonly used shell is bash.
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The current directory or current working directory is the directory which is currently open in the user’s terminal. The value of the working directory can usually be read from the command prompt:
drbob@swordfish ~/Development/workflow-reference/unix $
In this example ~/Development/workflow-reference/unix is the working directory where ~ is a common abbreviation for the user’s home directory.
Note
The specific command prompt might look different depending on the configuration of your particular computer.
The value of the working directory can be found at any time using the pwd command:
drbob@swordfish ~/Development/workflow-reference/unix $ pwd
/Users/drbob/Development/workflow-reference/unix
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This is the directory where the user stores all of his or her personal information and files as well as log in scripts and user information. The user’s home directory is commonly abbreviated as ~.
Returning to the user’s home directory from any other directory can be accomplished with the cd command:
drbob@swordfish ~/Development/workflow-reference $ cd
drbob@swordfish ~ $
The Current Working Directory is now equal to the user’s home directory so that the full path name to the home directory can be found through pwd:
drbob@swordfish ~ $ pwd
/Users/drbob
See also
See also
See also
Some common UNIX commands.
Changes into a particular (sub)directory or returns to the user’s home directory when no (sub)directory is specified.
Returns the name of the Current Working Directory.