Working with the filesystem

Understand absolute and relative paths, navigate with special symbols, use tab completion and wildcards, and build confidence moving around the file system.

Overview

Every file on your computer lives inside a hierarchy of directories. To work in the terminal, you need to know how to describe where files are (paths) and how to move between directories efficiently. This tutorial covers the filesystem’s tree structure, the difference between absolute and relative paths, special shorthand symbols, tab completion, and wildcards.

Prerequisites: CLI fundamentals

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The filesystem as a tree

Your computer’s filesystem is organized like an upside-down tree. At the very top is the , written as /. Every file and directory on the system lives somewhere under root.

Here is a simplified view of what a macOS filesystem looks like:

/
├── Applications/
├── System/
├── Users/
│   ├── jane/
│   │   ├── Desktop/
│   │   ├── Documents/
│   │   │   └── report.txt
│   │   ├── Downloads/
│   │   └── Pictures/
│   └── shared/
└── tmp/

Directories contain other directories and files. The path from root down to any file describes exactly where it lives — like a mailing address.

Tip

You can visualize your own filesystem with the tree command. If you installed it in the previous tutorial (brew install tree), try:

tree -L 2 ~

The -L 2 flag limits the display to two levels deep so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Absolute vs relative paths

There are two ways to describe where a file is: absolute paths and relative paths.

Absolute paths

An starts from the root directory (/) and spells out the full location:

/Users/jane/Documents/report.txt

An absolute path works no matter where you currently are in the filesystem. It always starts with /.

Relative paths

A starts from your current working directory. If you are in /Users/jane, then:

Documents/report.txt

points to the same file as the absolute path above. Relative paths never start with /.

Worked example

Suppose you are in /Users/jane/Desktop. Here are two ways to reach the same file:

# Absolute path — works from anywhere
cat /Users/jane/Documents/report.txt

# Relative path — works because we are in /Users/jane/Desktop
cat ../Documents/report.txt

The .. in the relative path means “go up one directory” (from Desktop to jane), then descend into Documents.

Special path symbols

The shell recognizes several shorthand symbols that make navigation faster.

Symbol	Meaning	Example
~	Home directory	cd ~
.	Current directory	ls .
..	Parent directory (one level up)	cd ..
-	Previous directory (with cd)	cd -

Home directory (~)

The tilde ~ expands to your . These two commands are equivalent:

cd /Users/jane
cd ~

You can also use ~ inside paths:

ls ~/Documents

Running cd with no arguments also takes you home:

cd

Current directory (.)

A single dot refers to the directory you are in right now. You rarely need it for navigation, but it appears in paths like ./script.sh (meaning “run script.sh from the current directory”).

Parent directory (..)

Double dots mean “one level up.” You can chain them:

cd ../..

This moves up two levels. After each cd, run pwd to confirm where you landed.

Previous directory (-)

cd - jumps back to whatever directory you were in before the last cd. This is handy when you are bouncing between two locations:

cd ~/Documents
cd /tmp
cd -
pwd

/Users/jane/Documents

The home directory

Your home directory (~) is where your personal files and settings live. On macOS it is typically /Users/yourname; on Linux, /home/yourname.

Common directories you will find inside ~:

Directory	Contains
Desktop/	Files visible on your desktop
Documents/	Personal documents
Downloads/	Files downloaded from the web
Pictures/	Images and screenshots

Hidden files and dotfiles

Some files in your home directory start with a dot — these are . The regular ls command does not show them:

ls ~

Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Pictures

Add the -a flag to reveal hidden files:

ls -a ~

.            .bash_history  .zshrc     Desktop    Downloads
..           .gitconfig     .config    Documents  Pictures

Files like .zshrc and .gitconfig store configuration for your shell and tools. Starting a name with a dot is a convention for “this file is configuration, not regular content” — it does not make the file secure or protected, just hidden from default listings.

Note

We will edit dotfiles like .zshrc in the Shell configuration tutorial to customize your terminal.

Tab completion

Tab completion is one of the most useful features of the shell. Instead of typing a full file name or path, type just the first few characters and press Tab:

cd Docu⟨Tab⟩

The shell completes it to cd Documents/.

Multiple matches

If more than one file matches, pressing Tab once does nothing. Press Tab twice to see all the options:

cd Do⟨Tab⟩⟨Tab⟩

Documents/  Downloads/

Type one more character to narrow it down, then Tab again:

cd Doc⟨Tab⟩

Navigating deep paths

You can Tab your way through long paths one segment at a time:

ls ~/Doc⟨Tab⟩/rep⟨Tab⟩

becomes:

ls ~/Documents/report.txt

This saves typing and prevents typos. Build the Tab habit early — experienced CLI users press Tab almost reflexively.

Commands and programs

Tab completion also works for commands themselves. Type a few letters of a command and press Tab to see matching programs:

bre⟨Tab⟩⟨Tab⟩

break  brew

Wildcards and globbing

let you match multiple files at once using patterns instead of exact names. The shell expands these patterns — a process called — before passing the results to the command.

The * wildcard

An asterisk matches any sequence of characters (including none):

ls *.txt

notes.txt  report.txt  todo.txt

This lists every file in the current directory that ends with .txt.

You can use * anywhere in a pattern:

ls report.*

report.txt  report.pdf

The ? wildcard

A question mark matches exactly one character:

ls file?.txt

file1.txt  file2.txt  fileA.txt

This would not match file10.txt (two characters after “file”) or file.txt (zero characters).

Practical examples

Copy all Markdown files to a backup directory:

cp *.md backup/

List only three-letter file extensions:

ls *.???

Warning

Be especially careful combining wildcards with rm. The command rm *.txt deletes every .txt file in the current directory with no confirmation. Always run ls with the same pattern first to verify what will be matched:

ls *.txt          # preview what matches
rm *.txt          # then delete if correct

Practical patterns

Here are a few common filesystem tasks that combine what you have learned.

Copying and moving between directories

Copy a file from your current directory to another:

cp report.txt ~/Documents/

Move a file from Downloads to Documents:

mv ~/Downloads/data.csv ~/Documents/

Creating nested directories

The -p flag tells mkdir to create parent directories as needed:

mkdir -p projects/website/images

This creates projects/, projects/website/, and projects/website/images/ all in one command — even if none of them exist yet.

Spaces in file names

File names with spaces require quoting. Without quotes, the shell interprets each word as a separate argument:

# This tries to list two items: "my" and "file.txt"
ls my file.txt

# This lists the single file "my file.txt"
ls "my file.txt"

You can also escape the space with a backslash:

ls my\ file.txt

Tip

Avoiding spaces in file names makes life easier in the terminal. Use underscores (my_file.txt) or hyphens (my-file.txt) instead.

Summary

Symbol / concept	Meaning
/	Root directory (start of absolute paths)
~	Home directory
.	Current directory
..	Parent directory
- (with cd)	Previous directory
*	Wildcard: matches any characters
?	Wildcard: matches one character
Tab	Auto-complete file names and commands
"quotes"	Handle spaces in file names
mkdir -p	Create nested directories

Next tutorial: Shell configuration