October 30, 2003 PWD 1

### NAME

pwd - return working directory name

### SYNOPSIS

pwd [-LP]

### DESCRIPTION

pwd writes the absolute pathname of the current working directory to the standard output.

The following options are available:

-L
  If the ```PWD` environment variable is an absolute pathname that contains neither "/./" nor "/../" and references the current directory, then ```PWD` is assumed to be the name of the current directory.

-P
  Print the physical path to the current working directory, with symbolic links in the path resolved.

The default for the pwd command is -P.

pwd is usually provided as a shell builtin (which may have a different default).

### EXIT STATUS

The pwd utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

### SEE ALSO

cd(1), csh(1), ksh(1), sh(1), getcwd(3)

### STANDARDS

The pwd utility is expected to be conforming to IEEE Std 1003.1 (``POSIX.1'') , except that the default is -P not -L.

### BUGS

In csh(1) the command dirs is always faster (although it can give a different answer in the rare case that the current directory or a containing directory was moved after the shell descended into it).

pwd -L relies on the file system having unique inode numbers. If this is not true (e.g., on FAT file systems) then pwd -L may fail to detect that ```PWD` is incorrect.