Navigating in Terminal

Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Define what Terminal is and how it is structured
• Navigate through and list files on your machine
• Define the following terms: shell, terminal, directory, absolute path, relative path

💡 Why this matters: Every developer, in every language and stack, ends up living in Terminal. It looks intimidating the first time you open it — no icons, no menus, just a blinking cursor — but the handful of commands in this lesson (pwd, ls, cd) are ones you’ll type hundreds of times a day for the rest of your career. Go slowly here. By the end of this lesson, moving around your computer with just a keyboard will already start to feel natural.

What Is Terminal?

Terminal is an application that gives you a command line interface (or CLI) for interacting with your computer. Anything you can do by clicking around in Finder or File Explorer, you can also do in Terminal — usually faster, once it clicks.

Shell vs. Terminal

You’ll hear “shell” and “terminal” used interchangeably. They’re not quite the same thing:

• The terminal is the window — the wrapper program you’re typing into.
• The shell is the program actually reading your commands, running them, and handing back output. Bash and Zsh are the two most common shells; this course uses Zsh, the default on modern Macs.

Want the more precise definition? Here’s how Stack Overflow puts it:

The shell is the program which actually processes commands and returns output. Most shells also manage foreground and background processes, command history and command line editing… A terminal refers to a wrapper program which runs a shell.

If you’re on Windows, install Git Bash — it gives you a Bash-like shell so you can follow along with the same commands as Mac and Linux users.

How Terminal Is Structured

Think of your filesystem like a filing cabinet. The whole cabinet is the root directory, written as /. Every drawer, folder, and file on your computer lives somewhere inside it.

/
└── Users
    └── sam              <- your home directory, aka ~
        ├── Desktop
        ├── Documents
        └── Downloads

You’ll rarely touch what’s directly inside / — that’s system-level stuff your machine needs to run. What you’ll live in day to day is your home directory: the folder for your specific user account, shown as ~. If your username is sam, your home directory is /Users/sam, and ~ is just a shortcut for that same path.

Seeing What’s Around You

Before you move anywhere, it helps to know what’s actually there. Two commands for that:

• pwd (print working directory) shows the absolute path of where you are right now
• ls (list) shows the files and folders inside your current directory

Moving Around

The command you’ll use most in Terminal is cd — short for change directory.

• cd <folder name> moves you into that folder
• cd .. moves you up one level
• cd ~ (or just cd on its own) takes you home

That’s genuinely most of what you need to get anywhere on your machine.

Absolute Paths vs. Relative Paths

A path is the address for a file or folder. There are two ways to write one:

Both commands above land you in the same place — just two different routes. Absolute paths always work no matter where you start; relative paths are shorter to type but depend on your current location.

Try It

Now put it together in the sandbox below. It’s a small sandboxed file system, not a real shell, but pwd, ls, and cd behave here the same way they do everywhere.

Work through these, in order:

1. Run pwd to confirm you’re home.
2. Run ls to see what’s inside.
3. cd Desktop, then pwd to confirm you moved.
4. cd .. to go back up a level.
5. Reach Documents two ways — first with cd Documents (relative), then go home with cd ~ and use cd /Users/sam/Documents (absolute).

Nice work — that’s the same cd you’ll use for the rest of this course.

Recap

• Terminal is the window; the shell (Bash/Zsh) is what actually runs your commands.
• / is the root of everything; ~ is your home directory.
• pwd tells you where you are, ls shows what’s around you, cd moves you.
• Absolute paths start from /; relative paths start from wherever you’re standing.

You’ve got the core moves down. Next lesson, you’ll start creating, moving, and deleting real files and folders — that’s where Terminal starts to feel genuinely useful.

Questions to Answer

• What is the difference between / and ~? What do we call each of these directories?
• What command do we use to change directories?
• What is the difference between an absolute and relative path?