
The pwd command displays the directory where the user is currently located. (pwd stands for “print working directory”). For example, typing
pwd
while in the
Desktop
directory will show
/home/[username]/Desktop
.
Note
Konsole also displays this information in both the tab and title bar of its window.
The cd command changes directories. (cd stands for “change directory”). When a terminal window is opened, it will be in the user's home directory. Moving around the file system requires the use of the cd command.
To navigate into the root directory, type:
cd /
To navigate to the current user's home directory, type:
cd
or
cd ~
Note
The ~ character represents the current user's home directory. As shown above, cd ~ is equivalent to cd /home/username/. However, when running a command as root (using sudo, for example), ~ points to
/root
. When running a cd command with sudo, the full path to the home directory must be given.To navigate up one directory level, type:
cd ..
To navigate up two directory levels, type:
cd ../../
To navigate to the previous directory (go back), type:
cd -
To navigate through multiple levels of directories at once, specify the full directory path. For example, type:
cd /var/log
to go directly to the
/log
subdirectory of/var/
. For another example, typing:cd ~/Desktop
moves to the
Desktop
subdirectory inside the current user's home directory.
The ls command outputs a list of the files in the current directory. (ls is short for “list”). For example, typing
ls ~
will display the files that are in the current user's home directory.
Used with the -l option, ls outputs other information along with the filename, such as the permissions on the file, the file's owner, and more.
Used with the -al options, ls outputs the information associated with the -l option in addition to showing hidden files (a option).
The touch command is used to change a file's access and modification timestamps or to create a new empty file. For example,
touch foo
will create a new empty file named
foo
. If foo
is already a file, then
using touch will update the timestamps on the file, which
show the last time a file was touched.
The mkdir command is used to create a new directory.
(mkdir stands for “make directory”). To create
a new directory named foobar
, type:
mkdir foobar
The cp command makes a copy of a file or directory.
(cp is short for “copy”). To make an exact copy
of foo
and name it bar
, type:
cp foo bar
To make an exact copy of the foo_dir
directory and name it bar_dir
, type:
cp -r foo_dir bar_dir
The mv command moves a file or directory to a different
location or renames a file or directory. (mv is short for
“move”). To rename the file foo
to
bar
, type:
mv foo bar
To move the file
foo
into the current user's Desktop
directory, type:
mv foo ~/Desktop
This will not rename foo
to
Desktop
, because foo
is a file and
Desktop
is a directory.
The rm command is used to delete files and directories.
(rm is short for “remove”). To delete the file
foo
from the current directory, type:
rm foo
By default, rm will not remove directories. To remove a directory, you must use the -r option (which can also be entered as -R or --recursive). For example,
rm -r foobar
or
rm -R foobar
or
rm --recursive foobar
will remove the directory
foobar
and all of its
contents!