Navigation#
In addition to exploring your current location, you want to be able to change your location by moving along the branches in your hierarchical file system. This is identical to switching between folders in your Windows or Mac OS X filesystem with the difference that you do not have folder and file icons to look at.
Just remember that if you are ever unsure about where you are at on the tree structure, you can check where your current location with the command pwd.
Click on the image below to see what some commands will do within your file system.
cd stands for change directory and will change your location (the branch you are sitting on), your ‘working directory’, to the path given, absolute or relative. If no address is given, you return to your home directory.
# Going back one step and check where you are
cd ..
pwd
# Going back to previous directory
cd -
pwd
# Going to your home directory
cd ~
pwd
# Going to your home directory (identical to cd ~)
cd
pwd
# Going to the root
cd /
pwd
Exercise 1.4#
Exercise 1.4
Use cd to go up one level
# Use cd to change directory and .. to go up one level
cd ..
Use ls to see all the home directories of other users on the server
# Use ls to see what is in the directory
ls
Try to go up two levels using cd
# Use cd to change directory and .. to go up two levels
cd ../..
Use cd to go back to your home directory
# To get to the home directory just typing cd
cd
Use absolute path to enter the directory at
/nfs/teaching/551-0132-00L/1_Unix/genomes. What is in it?
# Use cd to change directory and give the absolute path to go to genomes
cd /nfs/teaching/551-0132-00L/1_Unix/genomes
# Use ls to see what is in there
ls
Use absolute path to go home
# Use cd to change directory and remember that an absolute path starts at the root
cd /nfs/nas22/fs2202/biol_micro_teaching/course_home/<your eth username>
# Since the pathname is quite long, we created an alias. So, you can shorten the part "nas22/fs2202/biol_micro_teaching/" to "teaching/" and still refer to the correct location. Therefore, the command below leads you also home.
cd /nfs/teaching/course_home/<your eth username>
Note that the alias can be used in any command and we use the shortened version in the OLM
Go to the root of the file system. Can you find the first directory leading to the teaching directory?
# Use cd to change directory and to go to the root use /
cd /
# Check what is in the root directory, you see a directory called nfs which is always the first directory from the root /nfs in each absolute path
ls
Experiment with cd and ls to explore the directory structure within
/nfs/teaching/551-0132-00L/1_Unix/genomesbefore returning to your home directory
# Let's start at the genomes directory:
cd /nfs/teaching/551-0132-00L/1_Unix/genomes
ls
# What's in the bacteria directory?
cd bacteria
ls
# Finally let's go to your personal home directory
cd
cd ~
# Notice that either one of the options above work
# Check that you are in your home directory
pwd