d. Exploring Directories

Not only can we use ls on the current working directory, but we can use it to list the contents of a different directory. Let’s take a look at our Desktop directory by running ls -F Desktop, i.e., the command ls with the -F option and the [argument][Arguments] Desktop. The argument Desktop tells ls that we want a listing of something other than our current working directory:

$ ls -F Desktop

shell-lesson-data/

Note that if a directory named Desktop does not exist in your current working directory, this command will return an error. Typically, a Desktop directory exists in your home directory, which we assume is the current working directory of your bash shell.

Your output should be a list of all the files and sub-directories in your Desktop directory, including the shell-lesson-data directory you downloaded at the setup for this lesson. On many systems, the command line Desktop directory is the same as your GUI Desktop. Take a look at your Desktop to confirm that your output is accurate.

As you may now see, using a bash shell is strongly dependent on the idea that your files are organized in a hierarchical file system. Organizing things hierarchically in this way helps us keep track of our work: it’s possible to put hundreds of files in our home directory, just as it’s possible to pile hundreds of printed papers on our desk, but it’s a self-defeating strategy.

Now that we know the shell-lesson-data directory is located in our Desktop directory, we can do two things.

First, we can look at its contents, using the same strategy as before, passing a directory name to ls:

$ ls -F Desktop/shell-lesson-data

creatures/          molecules/          notes.txt           solar.pdf
data/               north-pacific-gyre/ pizza.cfg           writing/

Second, we can actually change our location to a different directory, so we are no longer located in our home directory.

The command to change locations is cd followed by a directory name to change our working directory. cd stands for ‘change directory’, which is a bit misleading: the command doesn’t change the directory; it changes the shell’s idea of what directory we are in. The cd command is akin to double clicking a folder in a graphical interface to get into a folder.

Let’s say we want to move to the data directory we saw above. We can use the following series of commands to get there:

$ cd Desktop
$ cd shell-lesson-data
$ cd data

These commands will move us from our home directory into our Desktop directory, then into the shell-lesson-data directory, then into the data directory. You will notice that cd doesn’t print anything. This is normal. Many shell commands will not output anything to the screen when successfully executed. But if we run pwd after it, we can see that we are now in /Users/nelle/Desktop/shell-lesson-data/data. If we run ls -F without arguments now, it lists the contents of /Users/nelle/Desktop/shell-lesson-data/data, because that’s where we now are:

$ pwd

/Users/nelle/Desktop/shell-lesson-data/data

$ ls -F

amino-acids.txt   elements/     pdb/	        salmon.txt
animals.txt       morse.txt     planets.txt     sunspot.txt

We now know how to go down the directory tree (i.e. how to go into a subdirectory), but how do we go up (i.e. how do we leave a directory and go into its parent directory)? We might try the following:

$ cd shell-lesson-data

-bash: cd: shell-lesson-data: No such file or directory

But we get an error! Why is this?

With our methods so far, cd can only see sub-directories inside your current directory. There are different ways to see directories above your current location; we’ll start with the simplest.

There is a shortcut in the shell to move up one directory level that looks like this:

$ cd ..

.. is a special directory name meaning “the directory containing this one”, or more succinctly, the parent of the current directory. Sure enough, if we run pwd after running cd .., we’re back in /Users/nelle/Desktop/shell-lesson-data:

$ pwd

/Users/nelle/Desktop/shell-lesson-data

The special directory .. doesn’t usually show up when we run ls. If we want to display it, we can add the -a option to ls -F:

$ ls -F -a

./   .bash_profile  data/       north-pacific-gyre/  pizza.cfg  thesis/
../  creatures/     molecules/  notes.txt            solar.pdf  writing/

-a stands for ‘show all’; it forces ls to show us file and directory names that begin with ., such as .. (which, if we’re in /Users/nelle, refers to the /Users directory). As you can see, it also displays another special directory that’s just called ., which means ’the current working directory’. It may seem redundant to have a name for it, but we’ll see some uses for it soon.

$ ls -larh

These three commands are the basic commands for navigating the filesystem on your computer: pwd, ls, and cd. Let’s explore some variations on those commands. What happens if you type cd on its own, without giving a directory?

$ cd

How can you check what happened? pwd gives us the answer!

$ pwd

/Users/nelle

It turns out that cd without an argument will return you to your home directory, which is great if you’ve gotten lost in your own filesystem.

Let’s try returning to the data directory from before. Last time, we used three commands, but we can actually string together the list of directories to move to data in one step:

$ cd Desktop/shell-lesson-data/data

Check that we’ve moved to the right place by running pwd and ls -F.

If we want to move up one level from the data directory, we could use cd ... But there is another way to move to any directory, regardless of your current location.

So far, when specifying directory names, or even a directory path (as above), we have been using relative paths. When you use a relative path with a command like ls or cd, it tries to find that location from where we are, rather than from the root of the file system.

However, it is possible to specify the absolute path to a directory by including its entire path from the root directory, which is indicated by a leading slash. The leading / tells the computer to follow the path from the root of the file system, so it always refers to exactly one directory, no matter where we are when we run the command.

This allows us to move to our shell-lesson-data directory from anywhere on the filesystem (including from inside data). To find the absolute path we’re looking for, we can use pwd and then extract the piece we need to move to shell-lesson-data.

$ pwd

/Users/nelle/Desktop/shell-lesson-data/data

$ cd /Users/nelle/Desktop/shell-lesson-data

Run pwd and ls -F to ensure that we’re in the directory we expect.

$ cd ~/Desktop/shell-lesson-data

$ cd creatures

$ cd -