Where Am I?

The Working Directory

When you open a shell, you are always in a particular directory. This is called the working directory or current directory. Every command you run is relative to this location.

The pwd Command

pwd stands for print working directory. It shows you the full path of where you currently are:

pwd

Output:

/home/user

Understanding Paths

Linux uses a single root directory /. Everything hangs off this root:

/                   ← root
├── home/           ← user home directories
│   └── user/       ← your home directory
├── etc/            ← configuration files
├── tmp/            ← temporary files
└── var/            ← variable data (logs, etc.)

The path /home/user means: start at root (/), go into home, go into user. The / at the beginning makes it an absolute path — it starts from the root, not from your current location.

When you first open a shell, you start in your home directory: /home/user.

Your Task

Run pwd to print the current working directory.