How to find the actual working directory?

Question

When I try to find the current working directory at a linux command prompt (using "pwd"), it will show the directory with symbolic links included. For example, if I make a symbolic link and use it to visit that directory:

ln -s /mnt/backup /home/biotech/backup
cd /home/biotech/backup
pwd

This will show "/home/biotech/backup" instead of "/mnt/backup". This happens on both Ubuntu and Cygwin.

What command can I use to see the latter, the "real" directory?

Solution 1

perheps:

pwd -P 

from help:

"-P : The pathname printed will not contain symbolic links. "

Solution 2

To solve this problem for the general case (i.e. not just current directory), use:

readlink -f PATH

Solution 3

/bin/pwd

It doesn't know where you've been or how you got there, so it works it out from first principles.

Solution 4

From the shell.

pwd -P

From userland.

/bin/pwd

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Comments

[Dan Carley]

Freudian slip there?

[pQd]

@Dan C - right. but it's fixed now ;-] [ hopefully ]

[Dan Carley]

Haha. I saw it before the edit and was a bit confused.

[Steve Bennett]

Which environment does this work in? For me on OSX, "which pwd" = /bin/pwd, so calling it directly makes no difference. You need the -P flag.

[Jonathan Leffler]

Anything sane - which apparently does not include Mac OS X. I've just tried it, and to my complete and utter horror, your observation is correct. I hate being nannied like that. It is completely obnoxious. Somehow, /bin/pwd is being told how you did your cd (on MacOS X). That is so infuriating I can hardly type coherently. Pusillanimous! Butchery of civilized system. Grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (The exact same test on a Linux worked as stated. Linux is sane. And I mainly use MacOS X; I don't get this infuriated with it easily.)

[Steve Bennett]

what's insane about a command behaving consistently regardless of where it's located?

[Jonathan Leffler]

It means I have to unlearn close to 30 years of sane behaviour and start mapping it to handle a system that deviates unnecessarily from the path of the old ones (like me). I've no particular problem with the shell knowing how I got to a specific directory, though that sometimes annoys me to. I have major problems with a command like /bin/pwd telling me how it got to the directory; it should work out where it is in the directory hierarchy. Basically, I've now got to know how to find out the real path on MacOS X differently from everywhere else. Which is an utter pain for portability.

[Jonathan Leffler]

And, just for the record, it is MacOS X (maybe BSD) vs 'the rest'; HP-UX, AIX, Solaris and Linux all behave as documented here. And if I had to guess, so will plain BSD; I'd lay odds it is a Mac-only 'feature' (full pejorative intent completely intended!).

[Vijay Anand Mareddy]

don't have an OSX system here, but perhaps it helps if you call it like PWD= /bin/pwd (with the space, i. e. unset PWD environment variable )?

[mdpc]

In the specific case readlink -f . would work just fine.

[Jonathan Leffler]

Interestingly, that (setting PWD empty, or unsetting it altogether) does work on Mac OS X, as does setting PWD to an invalid value. It is still frustrating to have to use a different command on Mac OS X to find the real path for the current directory compared with every other Unix-like system.