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🔍 See Original Answer on Ask Ubuntu ⧉ 🔗
URL:
https://askubuntu.com/q/840899
Title:
Commandline shortcut for current directory similar to ~ for home directory?
ID:
/2016/10/23/Commandline-shortcut-for-current-directory-similar-to-~-for-home-directory_
Created:
October 23, 2016
Edited: June 12, 2020
Upload:
October 19, 2025
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To use the current directory as the destination directory use a single dot ‘.’
Long Answer
Using your example you would type: cp ~/anotherdir/dir2/file .
To see the dot ., .. and ../../ directory names in action, copy and paste the following commands into your Terminal:
mkdir a && mkdir a/b && mkdir a/b/c && mkdir a/b/c2
cd a/b/c
cp /etc/default/grub .
cp /etc/default/grub ..
cp /etc/default/grub ../c2
cd ../../
tree
The output from tree command appears like this:
.
└── b
├── c
│ └── grub
├── c2
│ └── grub
└── grub
3 directories, 3 files
The . at the top of tree output represents the new current directory a which is the grandparent of a/b/c which we navigated to using the cd ../../ command. Underneath a we see the sub-directories a/b, a/b/c and a/b/c2
Line by line analysis
First we created 4 directories on one line by using && to join multiple lines together.
Then we changed to the directory a/b/c, which is the current directory for the following copy commands:
- In the first copy command (
cp) we set the destination to our current directory (c) with.. - In the second copy command we set the destination to the parent
directory (b) with
... - In the third copy command we set the destination to the sibling
directory (c2) with
../c2
Then, as stated earlier, we changed the current directory to a and ran the tree command to display all directories and files under a.
Cleanup
After we are done, we remove the three directories and files with:
cd ~/
rm -r tree