UNIX Basic commands: cd
Description
The change directory (cd) command is built into the system shell and changes the current working directory. The cd command can be used to either change to a directory that is relative to the the location of the current working directory or to an absolute location in the filesystem.
Syntax
The syntax for the cd command is:
cd <directory>
Parameters or Aruguments
- directory
- The relative or absolute path of the directory to change to.
Applies To
- Most UNIX variants including: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Illumos, SmartOS
Type of Command
- System Shell
Example - Use the cd command to change to a relative directory location
In this example we will use the shell cd command to change to a directory that is relative to the directory we are currently in.
To start, we will assume that our current working directory is the /home/example directory and that we will be changing to the existing /home/example/pictures directory. (If the /home/example/pictures directory does not exist you will need to refer to the mkdir command to create it.)
To use the cd command to change to the /home/example/pictures directory you will use the following cd command:
cd pictures
Some systems may not display the current or full working directory to the user on the command prompt. In these cases we will need to use the pwd command to view the path of the current working directory we are in.
pwd
The following screenshot shows that we successfully changed our working directory from /home/example to /home/example/pictures.
Example - Use the cd command to change to an absolute directory location
In this example we will use the shell cd command to change to a directory using an absolute directory path.
To begin, we will assume we are currently located in the /home/example/pictures directory and will be changing to the /home/example directory.
To use the cd command to change to the /home/example directory you will use the following cd command:
cd /home/example
In the following screenshot you can see that the working directory becomes /home/example after the cd command is run.
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