How you can work in Bash with the working directory (ie current, PWD, OLDPWD)

About

This article is about the management of the current directory in Bash.

Management

Query

You can query the current working directory via:

• the pwd utility
• or via the PWD environment variable

echo $PWD

Shell variable

shell variable concerning the current directory

Current: PWD

working directory

pwd stands for “print working directory”.

echo $PWD

Old: OLDPWD

Old working directory (“OLD-Print-Working-Directory”, previous directory you were in).

cd must have be used once.

echo $OLDPWD

Change

You can set it via the:

• cd command
• or via a tilde expansion

echo ~+ # ie PWD
echo ~-  # ie OLDPWD