The path to a file or directory is the set of directories that y o u have to traverse to get to it
from the top-level directory, followed by the name of the file or directory itself. Each compo-
nent in this name is separated by a forward slash (on Unix) or a backslash (on Windows).
So, if y o u organized your projects in a directory called
projects
under the top-level directory
and if the
projects
directory had a subdirectory for your
time_planner
project, the full path to
the README file would be
/projects/time_planner/readme.txt
on Unix and
C:\projects\time_plan-
ner\readme.txt
on Windows.
Spaces in Directory Names and Filenames
Most operating systems now allow yo u to create folders with spaces in their names. This is great when
you’re working at the GUI level. However, from the command prompt, spaces can be a headache,
because the shell that interprets what yo u type will treat the spaces in file and folder names as being
parameter separators and not as part of the name. Y o u can get around this, but it generally isn’t worth
the hassle. If yo u are creating new folders and files, it’s easiest to avoid spaces in their names.
T o navigate to a directory, use the
cd
command. (Because the Unix prompt varies from system
to system, we’ll just use a single dollar sign to represent it here.)
$ cd /projects/time_planner (on Unix)
C:\> cd \projects\time_planner (on Windows)
On Unix boxes, y o u probably don’t want to be creating top-level directories. Instead, Unix
gives each user their own home directory. So, if your username is
dave
, your home directory
might be located in
/usr/dave
,
/home/dave
, or
/Users/dave
. At the shell prompt, the special char-
acter
~
(a single tilde) stands for the path to your home directory. Y o u can always change
directories to your home directory using
cd ~
, which can also be abbreviated to just
cd
.
T o find out the directory you’re currently in, y o u can type
pwd
(on Unix) or
cd
on Windows.
So, for Unix users, y o u could type this:
$ cd /projects/time_planner
$ pwd
/projects/time_planner
$ cd
$ pwd
/Users/dave
On Windows, there’s no real concept of a user’s home directory:
C:\> cd \projects\time_planner
C:\projects\time_planner> cd \projects
C:\projects>
Y o u can create a new directory under the current directory using the
mkdir
command:
$ cd /projects
$ mkdir expense_tracker
$ cd expense_tracker
$ pwd
/projects/expense_tracker
Notice that to change to the new directory, w e could just give its name relative to the current
directory—we don’t have to enter the full path.
Chapter 1. Getting Started
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