pwd Command in Linux: Find Where You Are

Every path in Linux starts somewhere, and the shell is always standing in exactly one spot. The pwd command — print working directory — tells you that spot: the absolute path of the directory you are in right now.

Basic usage #

Print the current directory

$ pwd
/home/ana/projects/aospix

That is the whole command. It takes no arguments you normally care about, and it always prints one line: where you are, starting from the root /.

Why it matters #

Most mistakes in a terminal are location mistakes. A delete aimed at the wrong directory, an empty listing, a build script that cannot find a file — the cause is often that you were one level off. Running pwd before a destructive or unfamiliar operation is the cheapest insurance in the shell.

The shell also keeps the same value in the PWD environment variable, so scripts can read it without spawning a process:

Use PWD inside a script

#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo "working from $PWD"
mkdir -p "$PWD/output"

Symlinks: -L vs -P #

If part of your path is a symbolic link, pwd has two answers:

Logical vs physical path

$ pwd
/home/ana/work
$ pwd -P
/home/ana/projects/aospix/work

pwd (logical, the default) keeps the path as you typed it, symlinks included.
pwd -P (physical) resolves every symlink and shows the real location.

Flag	Behaviour
(none)	Print the logical path, the default
`-L`	Same as the default, kept for clarity in scripts
`-P`	Resolve all symlinks, print the physical path

Once you know where you are, the next step is looking around: ls lists what is next to you. Both are part of the terminal notes series on aospix.