Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide

Home Directories in the Filesystem

Users’ personal files are found in the /Users directory. Each user has a subdirectory named /Users/your-username: take for example, /Users/smith or /Users/jones. This is called your home directory. OS X provides several ways to locate or refer to your home directory:

In the Finder

On the left side of a Finder window, you may see an icon labeled with your username (e.g., “Smith”). This represents the home directory /Users/smith. Click it to access your home directory via the Finder. If you don’t see this icon, you can add it: visit the Finder menu, choose Preferences, click Sidebar, and add the icon.

cd

With no arguments, the cd command returns you (i.e., sets the shell’s working directory) to your home directory:

HOME variable

The environment variable HOME (see Shell variables) contains the name of your home directory.

➜ echo $HOME     The echo command prints its arguments
/Users/smith

˜

When used in place of a directory, a lone tilde is expanded by the shell to the name of your home directory.

➜ echo ˜
/Users/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
/Users/fred