Moving Around with cd

cd: change directory

cd moves you into another directory. Watch how the prompt changes to show where you are:

cd Documents
pwd
ls

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ cd Documents
student@vulntech:~/Documents$ pwd
/home/student/Documents
student@vulntech:~/Documents$ ls
school  work

Going up with ..

.. means the directory above (the parent). cd .. moves one level up:

cd Documents/work
pwd
cd ..
pwd
cd ../..
pwd

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ cd Documents/work
student@vulntech:~/Documents/work$ pwd
/home/student/Documents/work
student@vulntech:~/Documents/work$ cd ..
student@vulntech:~/Documents$ pwd
/home/student/Documents
student@vulntech:~/Documents$ cd ../..
student@vulntech:/home$ pwd
/home

../.. goes up two levels at once.

Going home

cd on its own, or cd ~, takes you straight home from anywhere:

cd /etc
pwd
cd
pwd

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ cd /etc
student@vulntech:/etc$ pwd
/etc
student@vulntech:/etc$ cd
student@vulntech:~$ pwd
/home/student

Going back

cd - jumps back to the directory you were in before, like a Back button. It prints where it took you:

cd /var/log
cd /tmp
cd -

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ cd /var/log
student@vulntech:/var/log$ cd /tmp
student@vulntech:/tmp$ cd -
/var/log

Jumping to the root

cd /
ls

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ cd /
student@vulntech:/$ ls
bin   dev  home  media  opt   root  sbin  sys  usr
boot  etc  lib   mnt    proc  run   srv   tmp  var

Common mistake: cd only works with directories. cd todo.txt fails with Not a directory. To look inside a file you'll use cat (module 4).

Tip: Use Tab with cd. Type cd Doc and press Tab.