pwd

pwd

The pwd command
Original author(s)	AT&T Bell Laboratories
Developer(s)	Various open-source and commercial developers
Initial release	June 1974; 49 years ago (1974-06)
Written in	C
Operating system	Multics, Unix, Unix-like, V, Plan 9, Inferno, SpartaDOS X, PANOS, Windows CE, KolibriOS
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command
License	coreutils: GPLv3+ Plan 9: MIT License

In Unix-like and some other operating systems, the pwd command (print working directory)^[1][2][3] writes the full pathname of the current working directory to the standard output.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Implementations

Multics had a pwd command (which was a short name of the print_wdir command)^[11] from which the Unix pwd command originated.^[12] The command is a shell builtin in most Unix shells such as Bourne shell, ash, bash, ksh, and zsh. It can be implemented easily with the POSIX C functions getcwd() or getwd().

It is also available in the operating systems SpartaDOS X,^[13] PANOS,^[14] and KolibriOS.^[15] The equivalent on DOS (COMMAND.COM) and Microsoft Windows (cmd.exe) is the cd command with no arguments. Windows PowerShell provides the equivalent Get-Location cmdlet with the standard aliases gl and pwd. On Windows CE 5.0, the cmd.exe Command Processor Shell includes the pwd command.^[16]

pwd as found on Unix systems is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and the Single Unix Specification.^[17] It appeared in Version 5 Unix.^[18] The version of pwd bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Jim Meyering.^[19]

The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include a pwd function with similar functionality.^[20][21] The OpenVMS equivalent is show default.

*nix examples

Note: POSIX requires that the default behavior be as if the -L switch were provided.

Working directory shell variables

POSIX shells set the following environment variables while using the cd command:^[22]

OLDPWD

The previous working directory (as set by the cd command).

PWD

The current working directory (as set by the cd command).

See also

• Breadcrumb (navigation), an alternative way of displaying the work directory
• List of GNU Core Utilities commands
• List of Unix commands
• pushd and popd

References

Further reading

• McElhearn, Kirk (2006). The Mac OS X Command Line: Unix Under the Hood. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0470113851.

External links

The Wikibook Guide to Unix has a page on the topic of: Commands

• pwd – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 4 from The Open Group
• pwd(1) – FreeBSD General Commands Manual
• pwd(1) – NetBSD General Commands Manual
• pwd(1) – OpenBSD General Commands Manual
• pwd(1) – Solaris 11.4 User Commands Reference Manual
• pwd(1) – Linux User Manual – User Commands
• pwd(1) – Plan 9 Programmer's Manual, Volume 1
• pwd(1) – Inferno General commands Manual