To address a certain file or directory, you must specify the path leading to that directory or file. As you may know from MS DOS or Mac OS already, there are two ways to specify a path:
Enter the entire path from the root directory to the respective file or directory.
Enter a path to the respective file or directory by using the current directory as a starting point. This implies to give the levels you have to move up or down in the file system tree to reach the target directory of file, starting from the current directory.
Paths contain filenames, directories or both, separated by slashes. Absolute paths always start with a slash. Relative paths do not have a slash at the beginning, but can have one or two dots.
When entering commands, you can choose either way to specify a path—depending on your preferences or the amount of typing—both will lead to the same result. To change directories, use the cd command and specify the path to the directory.
![]() | Handling Blanks in Filenames or Directory Names |
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If a filename or the name of a directory contains a space, either
escape the space using a back slash ( |
When specifying paths, the following “shortcuts” can save you a lot of typing:
The tilde symbol (~
) is a shortcut for home
directories. For example, to list the contents of your home directory,
use ls ~
. To list the contents of
another user's home directory, enter ls
~
(or
course, this will only work if you have permission to view the contents,
see Section 7.3, “File Access Permissions”). For example, entering
ls ~tux would list the contents of the home directory
of a user named username
tux
. You can
use the tilde symbol as shortcut for home directories also if you are
working in a network environment and where your home directory may not be
called /home
but can be mapped to any directory in
the file system.
From anywhere in the file system, you can reach your home directory
by entering cd ~
or even shorter, by
simply entering cd without any options.
When using relative paths, refer to the current directory with a dot
(.
). This is mainly useful for commands such as
cp or mv by which you can copy or
move files or directories.
The next higher level in the tree is represented by two dots
(..
). In order to switch to the parent directory of
your current directory, enter cd .., to go up two
levels from the current directory enter cd ../..
etc.
To apply your knowledge, find some examples below. They address basic tasks you may want to execute with files or folders using Bash.
Suppose you want to copy a file located somewhere in your home
directory to a subdirectory of /tmp
.
First, from your home directory create a subdirectory in
/tmp
:
Enter
mkdir /tmp/test
mkdir stands for “make
directory”. This command creates a new directory named
test
in the /tmp
directory.
In this case, you are using an absolute path to create the
test
directory.
To check what happened, now enter
ls -l /tmp
The new directory test
should appear in the
list of contents of the /tmp
directory.
Switch to the newly created directory with
cd /tmp/test
Now create a new file in a subdirectory of your home directory and
copy it to /tmp/test
. Use a relative path for this
task.
![]() | Overwriting of Existing Files |
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Before copying, moving or renaming a file, check if your target
directory already contains a file with the same name. If yes, consider
to change one of the filenames or use cp or
mv with options like |
To list the contents of your home directory, enter
ls -l ~
It should contain a subdirectory called
Documents
by default. If not, create this
subdirectory with the mkdir command you already
know:
mkdir ~/Documents
Enter
touch ~/Documents/myfile.txt
This command creates a new, empty file named
myfile.txt
in the Documents
directory.
Usually, the touch command updates the modification and access date for an existing file. If you use touch with a filename which does not exist in your target directory, it creates a new file.
Enter
ls -l ~/Documents
The new file should appear in the list of contents.
Enter
cp ~/Documents/myfile.txt .
Do not forget the dot at the end.
This command tells Bash to go to your home directory and to copy
myfile.txt
from the
Documents
subdirectory to the current directory,
/tmp/test
, without changing the name of the
file.
Check the result by entering
ls -l
The file myfile.txt
should appear in the
list of contents for /tmp/test
.
Now suppose you want to rename myfile.txt
into
tuxfile.txt
. Finally you decide to remove the
renamed file and the test
subdirectory.
To rename the file, enter
mv myfile.txt tuxfile.txt
To check what happened, enter
ls -l
Instead of myfile.txt
,
tuxfile.txt
should appear in the list of
contents.
mv stands for move
and is
used with two options: the first option specifies the source, the second
option specifies the target of the operation. You can use
mv either
to rename a file or a directory,
to move a file or directory to a new location or
to do both in one step.
Coming to the conclusion that you do not need the file any longer, you can delete it by entering
rm tuxfile.txt
Bash deletes the file without any inquiry.
Move up one level with cd .. and check with
ls -l test
if the test
directory is empty now.
If yes, you can remove the test
directory by
entering
rmdir test