How do I navigate between directories in terminal?

Question

I am new to Linux and Ubuntu and have tried changing to folders/directories with some difficulty.

Could someone explain why the following commands failed to change to the desired target folder/directory?

sharon@sharon:~$ cd Home 
bash: cd: Home: No such file or directory 
sharon@sharon:~$ cd /Home 
bash: cd: /Home: No such file or directory 
sharon@sharon:~$ cd Documents 
sharon@sharon:~/Documents$ cd Downloads 
bash: cd: Downloads: No such file or directory 
sharon@sharon:~/Documents$ cd /Downloads 
bash: cd: /Downloads: No such file or directory 
sharon@sharon:~/Documents$

Answer 1

The filesystem is GNU/Linux is like a tree, except that the root is on top. :-) So you have structure like:

/
  bin/
  home/
    sharon/
      Documents/
      Downloads/
      fileA.txt
      fileB.jpg
  usr/
  var/

If you want to move inside the tree, one option is to use relative paths. If you are in /home/sharon, then typing cd Downloads will work, because Downloads is an immediate child of your current directory. If you are in the subfolder Documents and want to change directory (cd) to Downloads, you have to go up (..) and then to Downloads. So the correct command would be cd ../Downloads.

You could also enter an absolute path. So the Downloads folder is a subfolder of sharon which is a subfolder of home which is … (you get the idea :-)) So you can also enter cd /home/sharon/Downloads wherever you are in the filesystem.

• ~ always refers to the home directory of the current user (/home/sharon in your case). If you enter cd ~/Downloads you'll land in your Downloads folder.

• . refers to the current directory, so cd ./Downloads is roughly equivalent to cd Downloads.

• .. means "parent directory".

• / at the beginning of file path refers to the root directory.

The next nice thing is tab expansion. If you enter cd ~/DowTab (last is pressing Tabulator key), the bash automatically expands it to cd ~/Downloads.

As the others said GNU/Linux is case sensitive. So it makes a difference if you enter Home, hOme or home. Furthermore I hope that you see now that there is a difference between /home and home. The first is adressed absolute while the last is relative to your current directory.

Answer 2

sharon@sharon:~$ cd Home 
bash: cd: Home: No such file or directory 

The little cedilla ~ indicates you are already in your /home/sharon directory. When you ask for 'cd Home' the terminal looks for /home/sharon/Home. There is none.

sharon@sharon:~$ cd /Home 
bash: cd: /Home: No such file or directory 

Now you are asking, given the leading slash, to go to a directory above the current location; that is /home/Home. There is none.

sharon@sharon:~$ cd Documents 
sharon@sharon:~/Documents$

Success!

sharon@sharon:~/Documents$ cd /Downloads 
bash: cd: /Downloads: No such file or directory 

I'm not too sure where exactly this is. If you want to change from /home/sharon/Documents to /home/sharon/Downloads, please try:

cd ~/Downloads

If you want to go directly to your home directory, that is /home/sharon, simply do:

cd

Also you can go Step back with

cd ..

And you can print the directory you are working in with (print working directory)

pwd

Answer 3

The command tells you why: There is no such directory.

Filenames are case sensetive, so it is /home, not /Home. Without a leading slash, it is assumed to be relative to the current directory, and the Downloads directory is not in ~/Documents, nor is it in /, but in your home directory, to which ~ is a shortcut, thus it is ~/Documents.

Answer 4

I have to answer over this, because i can't comment on answers -.-

What does the leading slash mean? – n00b

it means that the thin you are talking about is a directory not a file. Files don't have to have file endings like in Windows, so ~/thisIsAFile would be a file in your home-directory but ~/thisIsAFile/ would be a directory/ a folder.

What does ./ mean? – n00b

That means that the file you want to access is in your current directory.

Other usefull tips:

You can go a folder back with

cd ..

And you can get the path you are in with (print working directory)

pwd