pwd Command Cheat Sheet

pwd stands for Print Working Directory. It displays the full absolute path of the current location.

Synopsis

pwd [OPTION]...

Basic Usage

pwd
# Output: /home/user/projects

Symlinks: Physical vs Logical

Suppose /var/www is a symlink to /mnt/storage/www.

cd /var/www

Logical Path (-L)

Returns the path including the symlink (what you typed). This is the default.

pwd -L
# Output: /var/www

Physical Path (-P)

Resolves all symlinks to the actual physical location on disk.

pwd -P
# Output: /mnt/storage/www

Use in Scripts

Store current directory in a variable.

CURRENT_DIR=$(pwd)
echo "Running in $CURRENT_DIR"

Notes

• $PWD: The shell maintains the environment variable $PWD, which is equivalent to pwd -L.
• pwd is usually a shell builtin (runs fast inside bash), but there is also a binary /bin/pwd. To run the binary specifically (rare), use /bin/pwd.