The Full Map: Orientation Capstone

You have all three foundational tools: pwd (where am I), ls (what's here), and cd (move somewhere). In this lesson you use them together.

The pattern

Good terminal users follow a rhythm:

pwd          # confirm where you are
ls           # see what's here
cd somewhere # move in
ls           # see what's in the new location

Repeat until you find what you're looking for.

You can go one level at a time:

cd documents
cd projects

Or in a single step:

cd documents/projects

Both get you to the same place. The single-step version is faster once you know the path.

You don't have to cd to see inside a directory:

ls documents
ls documents/projects

This shows the contents of those directories without changing your current location.

Navigate to documents/projects and run ls to list its contents.