What Does Cd - (Cd Hyphen) Do?
I Typed Cd - in Terminal by Mistake Today, and I Got an Error Saying: Bash: Cd: Oldpwd Not Set and Unfortunately, Man Cd Doesn't Exist. No Manual Entry for Cd...
I typed cd - in terminal by mistake today, and I got an error saying:
bash: cd: OLDPWD not set
And unfortunately, man cd doesn't exist.
No manual entry for cd
What does it actually do?
2 Answers
cd - switches between the old and new present working directories.
avinash@avinash:~$ cd -
bash: cd: OLDPWD not set
avinash@avinash:~$ cd ~/Desktop
avinash@avinash:~/Desktop$ pwd
/home/avinash/Desktop
avinash@avinash:~/Desktop$ cd -
/home/avinash
avinash@avinash:~$
See also,
avinash@avinash:~$ echo $OLDPWD
avinash@avinash:~$ cd ~/Desktop
avinash@avinash:~/Desktop$ echo $OLDPWD
/home/avinash
avinash@avinash:~/Desktop$ cd d
avinash@avinash:~/Desktop/d$ echo $OLDPWD
/home/avinash/Desktop
avinash@avinash:~/Desktop/d$
The $OLDPWD variable stores the path of the previous present working directory.
Avinash Raj's answer is completely correct but as for the manual entry, you can get the POSIX manual pages and then man cd will work:
sudo apt-get install manpages-posix
man cd
The bit that tells you all this is the OPERANDS section:
- When a hyphen is used as the operand, this shall be equivalent to the command:
cd "$OLDPWD" && pwd
which changes to the previous working directory and then writes its name.
Marcus Vance is a cybersecurity auditor and technology writer dedicated to educating the public about online safety, data privacy regulations, enterprise security, and emerging cyber threats.
