How to navigate between directories using Terminal on Ubuntu/Linux machine?

Use the cd command to navigate between directories, which works on all Linux distributions.

The word "cd" stands for Change Directory, which is commonly used to change the current working directory to the new path provided along with the command.

What do we mean by the Current Working Directory?

The Current Working Directory is a directory or folder that a user is currently working on.

Before we look at the commands, let's consider the below directory structure.

  • The root is represented using /
  • The directory var is one directory away from the root directory /
  • The directory www is one directory away from var, and two directories away from the root directory /
  • The directory html is one directory away from www, two directories away from var, and three directories away from the root directory /
/
|  -  var/
|     |  -  www/ 
|           |  -  html
|           ...
|     ...
...

Use the below command to change the current working directory to www from the root directory.

cd var/www

Similarly, use the below command to change the current working directory to html from the root directory.

cd var/www/html

Use the below command to change the current working directory to www from any directory on the machine.

NOTE: The path becomes an absolute path by adding a slash before the path as shown in the below command. Otherwise, it is considered a relative path.

cd /var/www

Similarly, use the below command to change the current working directory to html from any directory on the machine.

cd /var/www/html

Similarly, use the below command to change the directory to the root directory from anywhere on the machine.

cd /

Use the below command to change the current working directory to html from the www directory.

cd html

Use the below command to navigate up one directory.

cd ..

Similarly, use the below command to navigate up two directories.

cd ../../

Use the below command to switch back to the previous directory you were working on earlier, which may not be close to the current working directory.

cd -

Use the below command to navigate to the user's home directory from anywhere on the machine.

On Ubuntu/Linux machine, every user has a home directory with their login username, which is considered the user's home directory.

cd ~

Use the below command to find the current working directory.

When we start working with a terminal, we need to navigate between directories using commands on the terminal.

If the current working directory is not too far from the root directory, we can easily identify the current working directory on the terminal itself. But it's difficult to identify on the terminal if it is too far from the root directory. In such a case, the below command is useful in finding the current working directory path.

pwd

Here the word pwd stands for Print Working Directory.

Use the below command to list the files in the current working directory.

ls

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