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Getting Your Bearings

Explore the command-line interface basics, including how to identify your current directory with pwd, list directory contents using ls, and navigate filesystems with cd. Understand home and root directories to gain confidence managing files and folders in the CLI environment.

The CLI

When we first open the CLI, we’re be presented with something that looks like this:

root@educative:/#

This is the prompt, and it’s the CLI’s way of saying it’s ready for us to type a command. This prompt is from the Ubuntu operating system.

In this case, the current working directory is represented by a tilde (~), which means our home directory. Our home directory is where we find documents, music, and settings for our programs. We have total control over our home directory. We can create and delete ...