pwd

For other uses, see PWD (disambiguation).

pwd
The pwd command
Original author	AT&T Bell Laboratories
Developers	Various open-source and commercial developers
Initial release	June 1974 (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

pwd (print working directory) is a shell command that reports the working directory path to standard output.

Although often associated with Unix, its predecessor Multics had a pwd command (which was a short name of the print_wdir command) from which the Unix command originated. The command 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. It appeared in Version 5 Unix. The version bundled in GNU Core Utilities was written by Jim Meyering.

The command is available in other shells and operating systems including SpartaDOS X, PANOS, and KolibriOS. PowerShell provides pwd as an alias for the cmdlet Get-Location. An equivalent command in COMMAND.COM and Command Prompt is the cd command with no arguments. On Windows CE 5.0, cmd.exe includes a pwd command. The OpenVMS equivalent is show default.

The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include a pwd function with similar functionality.

The command is implemented as a shell builtin in many Unix shells including sh, ash, bash, ksh, and zsh. It can be implemented with the POSIX getcwd() or getwd() functions.

Examples

The following examples are based on a typical Unix-based implementation.

With no arguments, the command writes the working directory path to the terminal:

$ cd /home/example
$ pwd
/home/example

Display the working directory without any symbolic link info. If at a directory /home/symlinked that is a symlink to /home/realdir:

$ cd /home/symlinked
$ pwd -P
/home/realdir

Display the working directory with symbolic link info. Note: POSIX requires that the default behavior be as if the -L switch were provided.

$ pwd -L
/home/symlinked

Shell variables

POSIX shells set the following environment variables while using the cd command:

OLDPWD

The previous working directory

PWD

The current working directory

See also

• Breadcrumb (navigation), an alternative way of displaying the work directory
• List of POSIX commands
• pushd and popd

Further reading

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

External links

• pwd – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 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 from Manned.org
• pwd(1) – Plan 9 Programmer's Manual, Volume 1
• pwd(1) – Inferno General commands Manual