19.1 pwd: Print working directory

pwd prints the name of the current directory. Synopsis:

pwd [option]…

The program accepts the following options. Also see Common options.

‘-L’ ¶

‘--logical’

If the contents of the environment variable PWD provide an absolute name of the current directory with no ‘.’ or ‘..’ components, but possibly with symbolic links, then output those contents. Otherwise, fall back to default -P handling.

‘-P’ ¶

‘--physical’

Print a fully resolved name for the current directory. That is, all components of the printed name will be actual directory names – none will be symbolic links.

If -L and -P are both given, the last one takes precedence. If neither option is given, then this implementation uses -P as the default unless the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set.

Due to shell aliases and built-in pwd functions, using an unadorned pwd interactively or in a script may get you different functionality than that described here. Invoke it via env (i.e., env pwd …) to avoid interference from the shell.

An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.