Jump to content

pwd

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JWilk (talk | contribs) at 14:12, 31 August 2019 (tidy up ref). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other uses, see PWD (disambiguation).
pwd
Original author(s)AT&T Bell Laboratories
Developer(s)Various open-source and commercial developers
Initial releaseJune 1974; 50 years ago (1974-06)
Operating systemUnix and Unix-like, SpartaDOS X, PANOS, KolibriOS
TypeCommand
Licensecoreutils: GNU GPL v3

In Unix-like and some other operating systems, the pwd command (print working directory)[1][2][3][4][5] writes the full pathname of the current working directory to the standard output.[6][7][8][9][10]

Implementations

The command is a shell builtin in most Unix shells such as Bourne shell, ash, bash, ksh, and zsh. It can be implemented easily with the POSIX C functions getcwd() or getwd().

It is also available in the operating systems SpartaDOS X,[11] PANOS,[12] and KolibriOS.[13] The equivalent on DOS (COMMAND.COM) and Microsoft Windows (cmd.exe) is the cd command with no arguments. Windows PowerShell provides the equivalent Get-Location cmdlet with the standard aliases gl and pwd. The OpenVMS equivalent is show default.

The version of pwd bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Jim Meyering.[14]

The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include a pwd function with similar functionality.[15][16]

*nix examples

Command Explanation
pwd Display the current working directory. Example: /home/foobar
pwd -P Display the current working directory physical path - without symbolic link name, if any. Example: If standing in a dir /home/symlinked, that is a symlink to /home/realdir, this would show /home/realdir
pwd -L Display the current working directory logical path - with symbolic link name, if any. Example: If standing in a dir /home/symlinked, that is a symlink to /home/realdir, this would show /home/symlinked

Note: POSIX requires that the default behavior be as if the -L switch were provided.

Working directory shell variables

POSIX shells set the following environment variables while using the cd command:[17]

OLDPWD
The previous working directory (as set by the cd command).
PWD
The current working directory (as set by the cd command).

See also

References

  1. ^ Unix Time-Sharing System: Unix Programmer's Manual (PDF). Vol. 1 (7th ed.). Bell labs. January 1979. p. 142. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2005-05-20.
  2. ^ Minix MAN page
  3. ^ Linux MAN page
  4. ^ GNU Coreutils MAN page
  5. ^ Bell Labs Plan 9 MAN page
  6. ^ POSIX Standard (IEEE Std 1003.1) pwd page
  7. ^ DEC OSF/1 MAN page
  8. ^ Apple OS X MAN page
  9. ^ OpenBSD MAN page
  10. ^ OpenSolaris MAN page
  11. ^ SpartaDOS X 4.48 User Guide
  12. ^ http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Panos.html#CL
  13. ^ http://wiki.kolibrios.org/wiki/Shell
  14. ^ https://linux.die.net/man/1/pwd
  15. ^ https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/pwd.html
  16. ^ https://octave.sourceforge.io/octave/function/pwd.html
  17. ^ POSIX Standard (IEEE Std 1003.1) cd page

Further reading

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pwd&oldid=913344156"