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rajbee
6,657 PointsMoving up a directory tree ?
To move up one directory, use cd .. To move up 2 levels, use cd ../../ Why do we need to use the / ? Why cant we use .. multiple times instead ?
2 Answers
William Li
Courses Plus Student 26,868 PointsHi there,
I believe the case that David Tonge mentioned, directory name with a space, we use backslash as escape character, not forward slash.
In UNIX, forward slash is used strictly as directory path separator; for example, /home/name/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.2.1/bin/ruby.
When you see couple dots .. in between //, that means navigate one level up to the current directory's parent directory. This notation comes up quite often when loading a source file (image/css/js) into a HTML page.
Hope this helps.
David Tonge
Courses Plus Student 45,640 PointsI think in the case of using the terminal the "/" is kind of an escape character. You can't use spaces in the terminal. Let's say I wanted cd to a directory named "Raj S" i'd have to put in quotes by using cd "Raj S" or using escape characters. So in your case using cd ../../ is kind of an shortcut instead of using cd .. cd .. twice.
David Tonge
Courses Plus Student 45,640 PointsDavid Tonge
Courses Plus Student 45,640 PointsThanks for the added information. I guess my wording and a slight mix up between the two characters totally threw it off.