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For other uses, see PWD (disambiguation).

In Unix-like and some other operating systems, the pwd command (print working directory) is used to output the path of the current working directory.

The command is a shell builtin in most Unix shells such as Bourne shell, ash, bash, ksh, and zsh. It can be implemented easily with the POSIX C functions getcwd() and/or getwd().

The equivalent on DOS (COMMAND.COM) and Microsoft Windows (cmd.exe) is the "cd" command with no arguments. Windows PowerShell provides the equivalent "Get-Location" cmdlet with the standard aliases "gl" and "pwd". The OpenVMS equivalent is "show default".

Example

If the following is input into a terminal:

$ pwd
/home/foobar

and the computer prints out /home/foobar, that means that the directory the user is currently in is /home/foobar. In the following example, the user is located in the directory /usr/local/bin, uses the command pwd, uses the command cd .. to move back to the parent directory and then uses pwd again:

$ pwd
/usr/local/bin
$ cd ..
$ pwd
/usr/local

See also

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

References

• pwd: return working directory name – Commands & Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX® Specification, Issue 7 from The Open Group