Files live in folders, and folders live inside other folders. In the terminal you are always standing inside exactly one of them, called the current folder (or working , which is the same thing in longer words).
Everything you type happens relative to that spot. Two commands keep you oriented.
pwd — where am I?
pwd stands for print working directory. It prints the full from the top of the disk down to where you are standing:
/home/user
Read that left to right: a folder called home, and inside it a folder called user. That second one is your home folder — the same place the shows as ~.
Note
A path is just a set of directions, with / between each step. /home/user/projects means “from the top, go into home, then user, then projects”. The very first / is the root of the whole disk.
ls — what is here?
ls is short for list. It shows what is inside the current folder:
downloads notes.txt projects todo.txt
Two folders and two files, sorted alphabetically. Note what ls does not show you: what is inside notes.txt. Reading files is a different job for a different command, coming in level 2.
Quick check
The terminal printed /home/user/projects. Which command did you just run?
Looking somewhere else without moving
ls takes an optional argument: a folder to look inside.
ls projects
That shows the contents of projects while you stay exactly where you are. Handy when you want a peek before deciding to go in.
Tip
Two useful flags here. ls -a also shows hidden files — the ones whose names start with a dot, like .git. ls -l switches to the long format: one entry per line with its permissions, owner, size and date (the simulator here keeps it to the names). You can look either of them up any time with man ls.
Quick check
Why would you run ls -a instead of plain ls?
Try it
The terminal beside this lesson starts you in your home folder, with a couple of files and folders already there.
Run them in order:
pwd— see where you are standing.ls— see what is around you.
Then, if you like, try ls projects to look inside a folder without stepping into it.
Tip
Get this pair into your fingers. When you open a terminal in an unfamiliar project — or when an AI agent hands you one and says “run this here” — pwd and ls are how you check that “here” is the place you think it is.