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[previous article] [next article]Cathy Curry
In UNIX, the command pwd is "print working directory," and the
working directory is the directory you are currently in. At
the start of every session, the operating system places you in
your HOME directory, and this is your working directory.
After logging in, you may change to another directory, in which case the
directory you transferred to becomes your current working
directory.
In Solaris, if you log into the machine that physically stores your
home directory on its disk, a pwd will say:
/export/home/a/yourlogin
For example, if your home directory is /home/yake/a/yourlogin and
you log into yake, a pwd will show as:
/export/home/a/yourlogin
If you log into another machine (e.g., dynamo), a pwd will show
as:
/home/yake/a/yourlogin
which is the path you would expect to get, even though you are on dynamo.
You are in the same directory in both of the above examples, except
the server uses a different name for it. However you should always
use the /home/server path name when referring to files and never the
/export/home name, since the /home/server path is the only one that
will work on all hosts (including the server).
If you do not know what your HOME directory path is,
use the finger command. Do a finger your-login
and under the "Directory:" heading you will see your HOME directory path.
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