In this tutorial we’ll learn the basics of navigation or moving around termux directory.

print working directory(PWD)

when you open termux commandline,do you know where you are ?. In which directory you are ? So in order to knowing the current directory. The command pwd come into play

execute pwd in termux

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$pwd
/data/data/com.termux/files/home

command pwd gave output /data/data/com.termux/files/home

pwd always help you when you forget where are you ?

list(ls)

The next command is ls ls stand for list, as name suggest “listing”. So command ls is used for listing files and directory in your current path or specified path.

execute ls in your commandline.

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$ ls
storage
kk
termux.txt

if it does’t show anything, it means, your current directory contain nothing or files are hidden.

In linux/termux the files or directory which has dot in prefix like .termux won’t listing with ls. Here you have to use -a option.

Listing hidden files

As you know the files which contain dot in starting that’s cannot be visible by just ls command, here we shiuld use ls -a

for example, create two file with or without dot . use touch command to create files

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$ touch .hidden
$ touch visible
ls
visible storage

In above example we created two file , first one is “.hidden” and second one is “visible” and when we execute ls visible shows but .hidden dont.

Now use ls -a to listing all files and dirrctory

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$ ls -a
. .. .hidden storage visible

you can see above ls -a listed all files and directory.

List file permissions

Files and directories permissions can be list by ls -l and ls -a

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$ ls -l
total 4
drwx------ 2 u0_a290 u0_a290 4096 Jun  3 11:40 storage
-rw------- 1 u0_a290 u0_a290    0 Jun  3 11:39 visible

For viewing hidden file permissions as well use -a flag with -l

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total 24
drwx------  3 u0_a290 u0_a290  4096 Jun  3 11:40 .
drwx------ 99 u0_a290 u0_a290 16384 Jun  3 11:39 ..
-rw-------  1 u0_a290 u0_a290     0 Jun  3 11:39 .hidden
drwx------  2 u0_a290 u0_a290  4096 Jun  3 11:40 storage
-rw-------  1 u0_a290 u0_a290     0 Jun  3 11:39 visible

We’ll know more about file permissiins further

Clear terminal.

you have already filled your terminal .let’s clear it by command clear.

just execute command clear in your terminal and magic will happen.

playing with directories.

Directories in termux, when we open termux the default directory is home directory. But suppose you want to go in your internal storage or any other directory.

Here command cd help us, cd stands for change directory. change your directory into /sdcard

like execute cd /sdcard and then execute pwd

Here before changing your directory into /sdcard. you have to give storage access permission to termux.

execute termux-setup-storage and after prompting window permit it.

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$ cd /sdcard/
$ pwd
/sdcard

Now we should learn about some tips so that navigating between directories will be more convenience.

• ~ (tilde) represent home directory, no matter where you are, whenever you execute cd ~ you will return in home directory

• . (dot) - This is a reference to your current directory.

• .. double dot represent parent directory or one directory up.

Now suppose you are in /sdcard directory. if you want to return home directory. execute cd ~

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$ pwd
/sdcard
$ cd ~
$ pwd
/data/data/com.termux/files/home

Now suppose you are in /data/data/com.termux/files/home directory and want to go one directory up in ` /data/data/com.termux/files so simply execute cd ../ or cd ..`

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$ pwd
/data/data/com.termux/files/home
$ cd ..
$ pwd 
/data/data/com.termux/files

What’s next

The next tutorial will be on removing and creating files and directory.