I created a soft link (ln -s 1 2) to a directory which is inside the test directory and opened the soft link (cd 2) and displayed the current path using pwd. The displayed path was ~/test/2 and not ~/test/1. It's different in an OS like Windows, the shortcut brings us to the real directory. I'm little bit confused how this soft link works in Linux. Is it not a shortcut like in Windows? Why is the path not ~/test/1? $ mkdir test $ cd test $ mkdir 1 $ ln -s 1 2 $ cd 2 $ pwd /home/dazz/test/2

I am trying to set the current directory in a shell script like this: cd /home/sshuser/xyz and get this response when I run it: $'/home/sshuser/xyz\r': No such file or directory* The cd command works when run from the command line. I intend to run the script in a cronjob.

Suppose I have a folder: cd /home/cpm135/public_html and make a symbolic link ln -s /var/lib/class . Later, I'm in that directory: cd /home/cpm135/public_html/class The pwd is going to tell me I'm in /home/cpm135/public_html/class Is there any way to know that I'm "really" in /var/lib/class ? Thanks

I want to run a script to simply change the current working directory: #!/bin/bash cd web/www/project But, after I run it, the current pwd remains unchanged! How can I do that?

Maybe I'm missing it, but I don't find it documented that cd '' should succeed. Since there is no directory with the name '', it seems obvious that it should fail. For example, mydir= cd -- "$mydir" || exit 1 # succeeds!! echo wrong Seems like a bug in about a million scripts, just waiting to happen. Is this some sort of backwards-compatible-bug kind of thing? Do I really have to do a separate check for an empty variable name every time I cd? FWIW, shellcheck doesn't catch this, either.

I was plodding along, working on a shell script, and I've just learned something that I found *surprising*. I'm presenting it here as a Question because I'd like to learn if there's some way to avoid this. Here's the *scenario*: cd to a folder that is defined as a variable; except the variable name is spelled incorrectly in the cd command:

$ TGT_FLDR=/home/seamus/logs/
$ cd $TGT_FLDF
$ echo $?
0
$ pwd
/home/seamus
$

I learned of this while testing a script:

TGT_FLDR=/home/seamus/logs/
...
cd $TGT_FLDF
if [ -n "$(ls -A)" ]; then
    rm *
fi
### OUCH!!!

If I had quoted "$TGT_FLDF" (as I probably should have) cd still fails. If the pwd happens to be somewhere other than ~; cd "fails" in a **different way**, depending upon whether or not the variable is quoted. Note that in neither case does cd throw an error; this makes the error [*pernicious*](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pernicious) in that it cannot be trapped in a test ([]).:

$ pwd
/home/seamus/logs/testing
$ TGT_FLDR=/home/seamus/logs/
$ cd "$TGT_FLDF"               # var quoted
$ echo $?
0
$ pwd
/home/seamus/logs/testing
$ cd $TGT_FLDF                 # var unquoted
$ echo $?
0
$ pwd
/home/seamus
$

This *struck me* as rather dangerous behavior (primarily b/c $? is 0). Since cd is a bash *built-in* (at least on my system), I checked cd --help. One item stood out: > If the directory is not found, and the shell option `cdable_vars' is set, the word is assumed to be a variable name. If that variable has a value, its value is used for DIR. This statement makes little sense to me, but it *suggests* that there is a *"shell option"* cdable_vars defined somewhere, that it's defined, and may be defined as $HOME. I think I'd like to change the value of cdable_vars, but where is this shell option defined?

Sometimes while accessing the various directories it happens most of the times that I remember the names or at least part of the names of a directory under our Linux system. But some of the directories are named starting with first character caps or one of the characters in the middle of the name Upper case. Can anyone suggest how can I make the arguments following cd command case INSENSITIVE, such that if I perform cd BackupDirectory or cd backupdirectory it could enter the directory name BackupDirectory. Of course I don't want to screw the things for other users so if the above is possible, is that possible that the change could be applied just to the session I am using and do not effect other users? Ok, I tried set completion-ignore-case on but this just doesn't work. It just helps in that if I type cd b and Tab or Esc Esc it fills the directory name ignoring the case. But, what I need is if I do a cd backupdirectory, it just ignores the case and enters BackupDirectory on its own.

I'm using a MacBook with OS X installed. I'm on Terminal trying to go to a directory. So I'm in Home and I use the command ls and there is a VirtualBox VMs directory. But when I try to do cd VirtualBox VMs it says "No such file or directory" Why? Is it because of the space bar in the word? How can I fix this?

I would find it very convenient to be able to use cd with a **file** argument. cd myDirectory/anyname.anyExtension would be equivalent to cd myDirectory/ What would be the best alias or function to achieve this behavior ? **EDIT**: Sorry I didn't mention it in the 1st place: I use zsh

Posting it here something that is puzzling me; upgrading an application server from Jessie to Stretch broke a bash script. Upon investigation, we narrowed it to a change of behaviour of the cd command. I am not discussing here if what the script is doing is a good idea, or if it could be improved, I am just focusing in a behaviour change /awareness of changes mindset. Jessie $echo *-* xxxx-1.0b xxxx-run $cd *-* cd works and cds to the first directory ; actually *-run is a symbolic link to the same directory. Stretch $echo *-* xxxx-1.0b xxxx-run $cd *-* bash: cd: too many arguments bash is 4.3.30(1) in Jessie, and 4.4.12(1) in Stretch. Why the change in behaviour between Jessie and Stretch?

I'm a relative Linux noob: I've worked with the bash shell for quite a while via an Ubuntu install in WSL2 on a Windows 11 machine and recently took the plunge to switch over to Linux 100%. My question is about changing directories (specifically navigating up a directory) using the terminal and using the tab autocomplete feature. Previously when I've been navigating on Ubuntu I was able to type cd .. on the command line and then press tab which would then complete the command to be cd ../. I could have sworn that when I spun up my new install (Kali Linux) that I was able to do the same thing. But now, when I try to do this (type cd .. and then press tab to get the auto complete to change it to cd ../) this is what I see instead: For reference sake, here's the output of neofetch on my system: OS: Kali GNU/Linux Rolling x86_64 Host: NH50_70RA Kernel: 6.8.11-amd64 Uptime: 1 day, 1 hour, 16 mins Packages: 3900 (dpkg) Shell: zsh 5.9 Resolution: 1080x1920, 1920x1080 DE: Plasma 5.27.10 WM: KWin Theme: [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3] Icons: [Plasma], Vivid-Dark-Icons [GTK2/3] Terminal: gnome-terminal CPU: Intel i7-9750H (12) @ 4.500GHz GPU: Intel CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile / Max-Q Memory: 6228MiB / 31813MiB I feel like the different behavior is due to using bash on Ubuntu and zsh on my current setup. I found this documentation on different configuration options within the .zshrc and looked through it but I wasn't able to find anything that stood out as far as what I could do to get my desired behavior. I think this is due to me not fully understanding the documentation rather than the solution not being in there. Sorry in advance if I didn't post the right info needed or if I didn't post enough to effectively troubleshoot this. This is my first time posting a question about Linux (well, second actually. I posted in this question over in the Superuser StackExchange but have not received any insight over there so I thought I'd post over here). If anyone would help me figure out what the best solution is to get this desired behavior I would greatly appreciate it. Optimally I'd like to be able to type cd .. at the command prompt and be able to press tab to have it autocomplete to cd ../, then if I immediately type .. and then press tab again it would autocomplete to ../ resulting with cd ../../ at the command prompt and so on, which in this example if I then pressed enter would take me up two directories from the current directory with the single command of cd ../../ having been formed and executed. I've seen answers where others have created something like a function to be stored in the .zshrc (or .bashrc for bash) file that could be called to navigate up a certain amount of directories at once by passing a number to the function when called, IE: the function is named something like cdu for Change Directory Up and entering cdu 2 at the command prompt and pressing enter would then automatically navigate up two directories from the current directory. This is a clever way to accomplish the same thing, but I'd really like to be able to manually "chain" on however many instances of ../ by pressing .. and then tab immediately after to dynamically see the command grow until I press enter to execute the command and navigate up that many directories. I could probably cobble together a function of my own that would let me do what I want to do, but I feel there has to be a simpler way like a setting that I need to configure in the right way that will make this happen. Thanks in advance!

- To move from ~/aaa/foo/bbb to ~/aaa/bar/bbb, one can use cd foo bar - and from ~/foobar/foo/www to ~/foobar/bar/www: cd "/foo/" "/bar/" But how is it possbile, using the same technique, - to move from ~/aaa/foo/foo/bbb to ~/aaa/bar/bar/bbb - or from ~/foobar/foo/foo/www to ~/foobar/bar/bar/www?

In Zsh, to cd from ~/foo/bar/aaa/bbb/ccc to ~/foo/bar/zzz/bbb/ccc, I can type cd aaa zzz, and that's it. I have carefully read the Fish cd man page, but I still cannot figure out: is the same thing possible there?

I have a Python script that looks files up in a relative directory. For example: the Python script is in /home/username/projectname/. I have a file that is being called within the Python script that is in /home/username/projectname/subfolder. If I run the script from the shell as python scriptname.py it runs perfectly fine. However, I'm trying to run the script as a startup service. I'm setting it up in webmin, and I believe its creating a shell script to call it. Through the startup script, I'm doing something like this to call the script: execute python home/username/projectname/scriptname.py The script is starting up fine, but it can't access the files in the relative directory. I am guessing that there is a better way to call the Python program from within the startup script so that its aware of the relative path.

**Premise** I've read what's listed in Bibliography regarding cd, pwd, set -P. > By default, or when the -L option is supplied, symbolic links in *directory* are resolved after cd processes an instance of ‘..’ in directory. (ref. Bash reference manual - sec. "[4 Shell Builtin Commands" - cd paragraph]) > If ‘..’ appears in *directory*, it is processed by removing the immediately preceding pathname component, back to a slash or the beginning of *directory*. (ibid) My version of Bash is

GNU bash, version 5.1.16(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

**Problem** To test things out I have the following file scheme in my current working directory that is the root of my experiment (dir111 is a symbolic link to dir010).

dir010/
dir020/
dir110/dir111 -> ../dir010

my_dir="$PWD"
cd dir110/dir111              # 1
cd ..                         # 2
cd dir111                     # 3
cd ../dir020                  # 4
cd "$my_dir"                  # 5
cd dir110/dir111/../dir020    # 6
cd -                          # 7
cd dir110/dir111/../../dir020 # 8

1) sets the current working directory to "$my_dir"/dir110/dir111, as expected[^1]. 2) sets the current working directory to "$my_dir"/dir110, as expected[^1]. 3) back to 1. 4) sets the current working directory to "$my_dir"/dir020, **unexpected**. I would expect cd to fail at "$my_dir"/dir110/dir020 (see below for explanation). 5) back to the root of my experiment. 6) **same as 4**. 7) back to the root of my experiment. 8) sets the current working directory to "$my_dir"/dir020, as expected[^1], but **in contrast with 6.** Line 4 should fail for the reason in the following paragraph. The reference manual and the man page (see quote in the Premise) both tell that .. make cd only remove the preceding pathname component, instead of looking at the .. of the inode entry. So the parent directory of "$my_dir/dir110/dir111 as seen by cd (in default behaviour) is "$my_dir/dir110, which does not contain dir020. I thought that this behaviour may be an exception caused by .. being the prefix of the «dirname» provided to cd «dirname». However, using .. as an infix (line 6) contrast with this. cd is behaving as if cd -P has been executed (or set -P (or similar) command issued before), that is by not following symbolic links. With cd -P, at 1., the current working directory would be set to $my_dir/dir010. set -o tells me

[omissis]
physical       	off
pipefail       	off
posix          	off
[omissis]

Is my (and the ones like me in other posted questions) interpretation of the reference manual correct? What am I missing? How can the behaviour of cd be described? **Bibliography** + [Bash man page] sec. "SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS" + [Bash reference manual] sec. "4 Shell Builtin Commands" + [Changing parent directory (../) with symlinks] + [Path resolution depending on pwd (symlinked dirs)] + [How do I cd up and down again with symlinks in bash?]

I was looking for a file in a directory and so I used the find command which then showed the directory path of where the file is. ex. $find . -name file.txt /folder/path/file-contents/file.txt Now I was wondering is there a way to cd into this directory a quicker way than copying the path directory and then using the cd command and pasting the directory? Also if there are two paths that get listed after using the find command, is there a way to just to cd to the second path given without copying and pasting that path as well? Just want to know to help me speed up working in terminal a little bit.

According to the Bash manual page the -e option of cd leads to an unsuccessful return status **after a successful directory change**. >If the -e option is supplied with -P and the current working directory cannot be successfully determined after a successful directory change, cd will return an unsuccessful status. $ cd $ mkdir -p test/a/b $ cd test/a/b $ rmdir ../b ../../a $ cd -Pe ..; echo $? cd: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory 1 Why is the above returning 1? How could cd -Pe .. possibly have made a successful directory change if the current as well as the parent directories do not exist anymore? Also, if I want cd to return an unsuccessful return status each and every time it cannot change to the desired directory, what are the situations where I have to add -Pe? From what I understand it is only necessary if . or .. are used in the argument for cd.

cd ~ does the same thing as cd $HOME which is also the same as cd /home/tandu However, cd ~not-tandu changes to /home/not-tandu Is this purely a syntactic choice? How is this handled by the kernel (or the cd execuable?) Is there a special case for ~ to add the slash if everything else is omitted? That is to say, ~/ and ~ change to the same directory, but ~a is one directory up. The same cannot be said for any other directory you change to.

I came across this question and showing the current path after cd is exactly what I'm looking for. However, I can't manage to get this behavior. What I've tried is this:

export CDPATH='.:/home/alexzeitler'

and

export CDPATH=$HOME

But after cd, the current path is not shown. I want to use it using bash and zsh and a solution without alias or function is preferred (those are known).

I would like to frequently switch between directories that are in totally unrelated paths, for example /Project/Warnest/docs/ and ~/Dropbox/Projects/ds/test/. But I don't want to type cd /[full-path]/ all the time. Are there any shortcut commands to switch to previously worked directories? One solution I could think of is to add environment variables to my bash .profile for the frequently used directories and cd to them using those variables. But is there any other solution to this?