Users’ personal files are often found in /home (for ordinary users) or /root (for the superuser). Your home
directory is typically
/home/your-username:
/home/smith, /home/jones,
etc. There are several ways to locate or refer to your home
directory.
-
cd With no arguments, the
cdcommand returns you (i.e., sets the shell’s working directory) to your home directory.-
HOMEvariable The environment variable
HOME(see Shell variables) contains the name of your home directory.$ echo $HOME The
echocommand prints its arguments /home/smith-
˜ When used in place of a directory, a lone tilde is expanded by the shell to the name of your home directory.
$ echo ˜ /home/smith
When followed by a username (as in ~fred), the shell expands this string to be the user’s home directory:
$ cd ˜fred $ pwd The “print working directory” command /home/fred