Linux directory commands for beginners

Lesson

On Linux, directories are places in the filesystem which can contain files and other directories. The Windows equivalent is a ‘folder’ - sometimes the words folder and directory are used interchangeably. Navigating between directories from the command line and exploring what they contain will quickly become second nature to you. Linux is structured according to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard – but you don’t need to understand all of it at this stage.

On Linux, the filesystem has a root at / (forward slash). All other files and directories can be described with a path from the root – with forward slashes used to separate the different levels of the hierarchy.

Directory structure example

For example, we might find user1’s Downloads directory at `/home/user1/Downloads’. Therefore, the Downloads directory is inside the ‘user1’ directory which is inside the ‘home’ directory which is inside the root (‘/’) directory:

/
  home/
    user1/
      Downloads/
          download1.ext
          download2.file

Absolute and relative paths

A path can be absolute which specifies how to get there from the root directory or relative to the directory you are currently in. Absolute paths have a slash at the start (a leading forward slash) whereas relative paths do not.

Absolute and relative paths example

Continuing the example above, if you are in the user1 home directory (/home/user1) then the relative path to download1.ext in user1’s Downloads directory is Downloads/download1.ext.

The absolute path is /home/user1/Downloads/download1.ext, and we can use this absolute path without worrying what directory we are currently in.

What directory am I in?

Often the prompt (the text to the left of where you type in a terminal – ending with a $ or a #) will display at least part of the directory that you’re in – the current working directory. However, there is also a command that will print the path to the current working directory - pwd for ‘print working directory’.

$ pwd
/home/user1

Wherever you are in the filesystem on Linux, if you get lost use pwd to check the location!

Show the contents of a directory.

Now that you know what directory you’re in, you probably want to see what else is here in terms of files and directories. You can list the contents of a directory with ls. Running just ls on its own will list the contents of the current directory. Running ls with a path to another directory (either a relative path or an absolute path) will list the contents of that directory.

Directory listing example

$ pwd
/home/user1
$ ls
Downloads
$ ls Downloads
download1.ext
download2.file

Furthermore, you can run ls with various options to change what it lists or how it displays that information.

Listing hidden files on Linux

The -a option will include all files in the output of ls, including hidden files. Files can be ‘hidden’ on Linux by having a file name which starts with a dot such as .hidden.txt.

Hidden files example

$ ls
Downloads
$ ls -a
.
..
.hidden.txt
Downloads

But what are those ‘dot’ (.) and ‘double dot’ (..) entries shown by ls? These are special directories that we can interact with. The single dot refers to the current directory, and the double dot refers to the directory one level up in the hierarchy.

Example

$ pwd
/user1/home
$ ls .
Downloads
$ ls ..
user1

Navigating to files and directories

To move between folders (which we generally call directories), we can use the cd command – ‘cd’ is short for change directory. Type ‘cd’ followed by the name of the directory that you would like to move into. You can either move to somewhere relative to your current directory or use an absolute path (starting with a forward slash) to move anywhere.

Relative path example

$ pwd
/home/user1
$ cd Downloads
$ pwd
/home/user1/Downloads

Absolute path example

$ pwd
/tmp
$ cd /home/user1/Downloads
$ pwd
/home/user1/Downloads

Go back to the previous directory.

Sometimes you might want to navigate back to the last directory that you were in. There is a hand shorthand for this; you can use cd with a hyphen/dash - like this cd -.

Example

The following shows an example of moving back to the previous working directory.

$ pwd
/home/user1/Downloads
$ cd /tmp
$ pwd
/tmp
$ cd -
/home/user1/Downloads

Go up a directory

It is also simple to navigate up a level in the directory hierarchy. We can do this using the special ‘double dot’ directory mentioned previously. To recap, .. is just a link to the directory above.

Example

The following shows an example of moving into the directory above the current working directory.

$ pwd
/home/user1/Downloads
$ cd ..
$ pwd
/home/user1

What is the home directory on Linux?

As a user on Linux, you will typically have a ‘home’ directory in /home/. The home directory is where you’ll generally find yourself when you open a new shell session and provides somewhere convenient to store your files. The shell has a useful shorthand for the location of your home directory, the tilde character ~. Whenever you type ~ at the command prompt, the shell will expand it to the absolute path of your home directory when it interprets the command.

Navigate to the home directory

To get to your home directory, you can use the cd command, with tilde ~ on the command line. The shell will replace ~ with the path to your home directory before completing the change directory command.

$ pwd
/tmp
$ cd ~
$ pwd
/home/user1

Print your home directory

You can use the echo command and the tilde shorthand to print the location of your Linux home directory. There are various ways to achieve this but using echo and ~ is an easy way to start.

$ echo ~
/home/user1

Tab Complete

When using a command which expects a directory as an argument (such as ls or cd), we can use the tab key on the keyboard (<tab>) to automatically complete the rest of the path. If there is only one path that we could be typing, then it will be expanded at the prompt. If there are multiple paths that the current line could be expanded to then pressing <tab> twice will print a list of the possible directories that you could use. Tab completion at the command line works for both absolute and relative paths.

Example

$ pwd
/home/user1
$ cd <tab><tab>
.
..
Downloads

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References

Learn more about this topic by checking out these references.

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