How to use Terminal to navigate into a desktop shortcut or folder in applications?

Question

I'm on a Mac and watching a tutorial on setting up Git.

I'm in the terminal and currently on the Desktop. I can us ls to list all the items on my desktop, and cd into any of the folders on my Desktop, but I can't get into my localhost shortcut (which leads to the MAMP folder in applications where all my websites are).

Error message:

1) How do you navigate into a shortcut, or

2) How do you navigate into the Main Mac folder (I can't see or cd into it from the terminal)

Solution

In order to get to the Main Mac folder, you can do cd /

Comments

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

file localhost says...?

[MKM]

when I type that in, it displays 'data'

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

I would remove the shortcut and create a symlink instead.

[slhck]

If you want to keep the alias and follow that, see: OS X terminal command to resolve path of an alias

[MKM]

Just tried that again, and can't CD into an alias :(

[MKM]

Thanks! I can now cd into my Applications > MAMP folder :)

[francesco]

Yeah, sorry, my answer was wrong, I revised it.