2.3.1 The cd Command

The cd command has the following syntax:

cd directory

This will set the current directory to directory. directory may be any number of layers deeper than the current directory. For example, to change to the system directory underneath the windows directory from the root directory, you would run the following command:

cd /windows/system

The directory names . and .. are reserved for relative path specification purposes. The . is a directory entry that represents its parent directory. For example, specifying MYDIR/. is the same as specifying MYDIR because the . specifies its parent, which is MYDIR. Similarly, the .. entry specifies the parent directory of the parent directory of itself. An example of this would be MYDIR/SUBDIR/.., which would of course be the same as MYDIR.