Asking for your location and username

Introduction

Depending on how your shell prompt is configured, you might only see the last part of your current directory. This can make it hard to understand where you are exactly. Or rather: in which directory.

And when you switch to another user account, as you must do to run commands that require administrative privileges, it's sometimes unclear which user account you are currently using.

Here are two commands to help you out.

Asking for the current directory

The pwd command prints the name and full path of the working directory (current directory).

Example

sarah@laptop ~$ pwd
/home/sarah

Why would you use this command, if your working directory is right there in the prompt?

Default prompts sometimes only show the last part of your working directory to save screen space. If you're writing a shell script that can be executed in any directory, the pwd command will tell you from which directory the script is being executed.

Asking for the current username

The whoami command - literally who am I - prints the username of the current user.

Example

sarah@laptop ~$ whoami
sarah