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Shell commands - pwd & ls

Shell commands - pwd & ls

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Mohamed Yahia
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pwd command

  • it lets you print out the path of the current working directory
  • pwd stands for print working directory
    nuclearegg69@zenbook-f13:~$ pwd
/home/nuclearegg69

ls command

  • it lists files and directories(folders) inside current working directory except for hidden files

  • ls stands for list

nuclearegg69@zenbook-f13:~$ ls
a  b  c  d  e  test
nuclearegg69@zenbook-f13:~$ ls test
a  apple  b  banana  c  cactus  test2
  • you could also provide an argument for the ls command to list the contents of the argument folder

ls options

  • -a lists ALL files and directories and that means including hidden files. hidden files start with a dot . 
nuclearegg69@zenbook-f13:~$ ls -a
.   .bash_history  .bashrc  .hushlogin  .local       .profile         .sudo_as_admin_successful  a  c  e
..  .bash_logout   .cache   .lesshst    .motd_shown  .python_history  .zcompdump                 b  d  test
  • h lists contents in human-readable format
    nuclearegg69@zenbook-f13:~$ ls -lh
total 4.0K
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 a
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 b
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 c
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 d
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 e
drwxr-xr-x 3 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69 4.0K Oct  5 02:33 test
  • l lists contents in long format 
nuclearegg69@zenbook-f13:~$ ls -l
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 a
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 b
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 c
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 d
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 e
drwxr-xr-x 3 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69 4096 Oct  5 02:33 test
  • --sort=someSortingCriteria intuitive
    nuclearegg69@zenbook-f13:~$ ls -l --sort=time
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 3 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69 4096 Oct  5 02:33 test
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 d
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 e
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 a
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 b
-rw-r--r-- 1 nuclearegg69 nuclearegg69    0 Oct  3 19:07 c
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