VulnTech Where Am I? pwd and ls | Learn Linux

pwd: print working directory

The directory you are in right now is called the working directory (or current directory). pwd prints its full path:

pwd

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ pwd
/home/student

ls: list

ls lists the working directory. Give it a path to list somewhere else:

ls
ls Documents
ls /

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ ls
Documents  Music  Pictures  todo.txt
student@vulntech:~$ ls Documents
school  work
student@vulntech:~$ ls /
bin   dev  home  media  opt   root  sbin  sys  usr
boot  etc  lib   mnt    proc  run   srv   tmp  var

Reading ls -l

ls -l

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ ls -l
total 2
drwxr-sr-x 4 student student  0 Oct 16 19:07 Documents
drwxr-sr-x 2 student student  0 Oct 16 19:07 Music
drwxr-sr-x 3 student student  0 Oct 16 19:07 Pictures
-rw-r--r-- 1 student student 19 Oct 16 19:07 todo.txt

Each line is one item. Take todo.txt:

Column	Example	Meaning
Type and permissions	`-rw-r--r--`	The first character is the type: `-` file, `d` directory, `l` link. The rest are permissions (a later module)
Links	`1`	Number of links to it. You can ignore this for now
Owner	`student`	The user who owns it
Group	`student`	The group that owns it
Size	`19`	Size in bytes
Modified	`Oct 16 12:30`	When it was last changed
Name	`todo.txt`	The name

More useful ls options

Command	Shows
`ls -a`	All files, including hidden ones
`ls -lh`	Long format with human-readable sizes (K, M, G)
`ls -lt`	Long format, newest first
`ls -R`	Recursively: every directory inside too
`ls -d */`	Only directories

Sizes in bytes are hard to read for big files. Compare:

ls -l Pictures/2024
ls -lh Pictures/2024

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ ls -l Pictures/2024
total 2301
-rw-r--r-- 1 student student 2355200 Oct 16 19:07 beach.jpg
student@vulntech:~$ ls -lh Pictures/2024
total 2.3M
-rw-r--r-- 1 student student 2.3M Oct 16 19:07 beach.jpg

ls -R shows a whole branch of the tree:

ls -R Documents

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ ls -R Documents
Documents:
school  work

Documents/school:
maths.txt

Documents/work:
report.txt

For a nicer picture of a branch, use tree:

tree Documents

In the terminal

student@vulntech:~$ tree Documents
Documents
├── school
│   └── maths.txt
└── work
    └── report.txt

3 directories, 2 files

Tip: ls -la is one of the most typed commands on Linux: everything, with details.

Remember: pwd tells you where you are. ls shows what's there; -l for details, -a for hidden files, -h for readable sizes.