Navigating the Filesystem | Linux Command Reference

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pwd — where am I?

pwd (print working directory) prints the absolute path of the directory you are currently in.

$ pwd
/home/user

ls — list files

ls lists files and directories. Without arguments it shows the current directory.

$ ls
Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures

Common flags:

Flag	Meaning
`-l`	long format: permissions, owner, size, date
`-a`	include hidden files (starting with `.`)
`-h`	human-readable sizes (`1.5M` instead of `1529172`)
`-t`	sort by modification time (newest first)
`-S`	sort by size (largest first)
`-d`	list the directory itself, not its contents

$ ls -la
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 3 user user 4096 Aug  5 10:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug  5 09:58 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user  123 Aug  5 10:00 notes.txt

Use ls <path> to list another directory:

$ ls /etc/hostname
/etc/hostname

cd — change directory

cd moves you to another directory.

$ cd Documents
$ pwd
/home/user/Documents

Useful forms:

$ cd ..          # up one level
$ cd ~           # home directory
$ cd /           # root directory
$ cd -           # the directory you were in before

Note: cd is a shell built-in, not a separate program — that is why it only works inside the current terminal session.

find — search by name, type, age, size

find searches a directory tree and is far more powerful than ls. The first argument is the start directory, then the criteria. (. means the current directory.)

$ find /home/user -name "*.txt"
/home/user/notes.txt
/home/user/docs/old.txt

Common criteria:

Criterion	Meaning
`-name "*.txt"`	name pattern (case-sensitive)
`-iname "*.TXT"`	name pattern (case-insensitive)
`-type f`	files only
`-type d`	directories only
`-mtime 0`	modified in the last 24 hours
`-mtime +7`	modified more than 7 days ago
`-size 0c`	files with zero bytes
`-maxdepth 1`	don’t go deeper than one level

Combine criteria and run a command on the results with -exec:

$ find . -name "*.log" -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

The {} is replaced by each result and the trailing \; ends the command. The + in -mtime +7 means “older than 7 days”; without it, -mtime 7 would only match files modified exactly seven days ago. Be careful with find -delete and -exec rm — they delete files and there is no undo.

locate — fast search by filename

locate searches a pre-built database of filenames instead of the disk, so it is much faster than find on large systems.

$ locate hostname
/etc/hostname
/usr/bin/hostname

Two caveats:

locate is not installed on every system, and the package differs by distro: on Ubuntu install plocate (sudo apt install plocate); on Arch also plocate (sudo pacman -S plocate). Fedora desktop ships plocate by default, but server/minimal installs may not.
The database must be refreshed with updatedb (usually run automatically by cron/systemd timers), so brand-new files may not show up yet. On Arch the plocate package enables a daily update timer when it is installed.