When you type the cd command by itself, you return to your home directory. For example, if your home directory was /home/user1: Show In the C shell, the tilde (~) is used as a shortcut for specifying your home directory. For example, you would type the following to change to the subdirectory music within your home directory: You can also use this shortcut to specify another user's home directory. For example: where username is another user's login name, would change to that user's home directory. Note - If you are using the Bourne shell, the ~ shortcut will not work. If you are using the Bourne shell, it may be possible that your system administrator has configured the system so that you can type changes you to the subdirectory music in your home directory. Likewise, typing: changes you to the specified user's home directory, where username represents another user's login name. The directory immediately "above" a subdirectory is called the parent directory. In the preceding example, /home is the parent directory of /home/user1. The symbol .. ("dot-dot") represents the parent directory. Therefore, the command cd .. changes the working directory to the parent directory, as in this example: $ pwd /home/user1 $ cd .. $ pwd /home Suppose your current working directory is /home/user1 and you want to work with some files in /home/user2. Here is a useful shortcut: $ pwd /home/user1 $ cd ../user2 $ pwd /home/user2 ../user2 tells the system to look in the parent directory for user2. As you can see, this is much easier than typing the entire path name /home/user2. In this lesson, we will introduce our first three commands: Those new to the command line will need to pay close attention to this lesson since the concepts will take some getting used to. File System OrganizationLike Windows, the files on a Linux system are arranged in what is called a hierarchical directory structure. This means that they are organized in a tree-like pattern of directories (called folders in other systems), which may contain files and subdirectories. The first directory in the file system is called the root directory. The root directory contains files and subdirectories, which contain more files and subdirectories and so on and so on. Most graphical environments include a file manager program used to view and manipulate the contents of the file system. Often we will see the file system represented like this:  One important difference between Windows and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux is that Linux does not employ the concept of drive letters. While Windows drive letters split the file system into a series of different trees (one for each device), Linux always has a single tree. Different storage devices may be different branches of the tree, but there is always just a single tree. pwdSince the command line interface cannot provide graphic pictures of the file system structure, we must have a different way of representing it. To do this, think of the file system tree as a maze, and that we are standing in it. At any given moment, we are located in a single directory. Inside that directory, we can see its files and the pathway to its parent directory and the pathways to the subdirectories of the directory in which we are standing. The directory we are standing in is called the working directory. To see the name of the working directory, we use the [me@linuxbox me]$ When we first log on to our Linux system, the working directory is set to our home directory. This is where we put our files. On most systems, the home directory will be called /home/user_name, but it can be anything according to the whims of the system administrator. To list the files in the working directory, we use the [me@linuxbox me]$ We will come back to cdTo change the working directory (where we are standing in the maze) we use the An absolute pathname begins with the root directory and follows the tree branch by branch until the path to the desired directory or file is completed. For example, there is a directory on your system in which most programs are installed. The pathname of the directory is Let's try this out: me@linuxbox me]$ Now we can see that we have changed the current working directory to Where an absolute pathname starts from the root directory and leads to its destination, a relative pathname starts from the working directory. To do this, it uses a couple of special notations to represent relative positions in the file system tree. These special notations are "." (dot) and ".." (dot dot). The "." notation refers to the working directory itself and the ".." notation refers to the working directory's parent directory. Here is how it works. Let's change the working directory to /usr/bin again: me@linuxbox me]$ O.K., now let's say that we wanted to change the working directory to the parent of me@linuxbox bin]$ Or, with a relative pathname: me@linuxbox bin]$ Two different methods with identical results. Which one should we use? The one that requires the least typing! Likewise, we can change the working directory from me@linuxbox usr]$ Or, with a relative pathname: me@linuxbox usr]$ Now, there is something important that we must point out here. In most cases, we can omit the "./". It is implied. Typing: would do the same thing. In general, if we do not specify a pathname to something, the working directory will be assumed. There is one important exception to this, but we won't get to that for a while. A Few ShortcutsIf we type A related shortcut is to type What command is used to change the working of directory?Use the cd command to move from your present directory to another directory. You must have execute (search) permission in the specified directory.
What is the command to return to a previous level of directory?for each level you want to go up. When you want to go back, type cd - and you will be back where you started. Aliases to jump to directories like wk or tools (shown above) swiftly take you from location to location, are easy to create, and can really help if you work in the command line frequently.
What is the command to change from a working directory to the user's home directory?Summary. Which command is used to change directory in Linux?cd command in linux known as change directory command. It is used to change current working directory.
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