Navigation

Use cd to move between directories. For example, type cd animals to move into the animals directory. You can jump multiple directories at once as well:

        $ cd animals/dogs
        
      

If you want to go to the home directory as quickly as possible, omit the directory entirely:

        $ cd
        
      

If you are ever lost, you can print the full path to the current directory with pwd. It’s a handy command to know when you are new to the terminal, but as you get more comfortable you should find yourself using it less and less.

View the contents of the current directory with ls. If you want to view the contents of another directory, you can do that too:

        $ ls animals
        
      

The ls command has a number of useful flags:

-l lists files using a detailed format that includes the permissions, file size, and latest modification date for each file:

        $ ls -l
        
          
            -rw-rw-r-- 1 mauritz mauritz 1264 Dec 5 13:30 dogs.txt
          
        
      

Use ls -lh to show human-readable files sizes like GB, MB, etc.

By default, ls does not list hidden files. To include hidden files in the output, use the -A flag.

When you are using cd and ls, there are a few special paths that you might want to be aware of:

.. is the parent directory. Type ../animals to go to the animals directory one level above.

~ is the home directory. Type cd ~/Downloads to move into the Downloads directory no matter where you are in the filesystem.

/ is the filesystem root. Start a path with / if you want to move somewhere irrespective of where you are on the system. Paths starting with / are usually called absolute paths, as opposed to relative paths that are dependent on the current directory.