What is the difference between cwd and pwd?

Question

What is the difference between cwd and pwd?

I've tried googling it, and one of the answers mentioned that depending on some factor (which I sadly do not remember), the implementation (the code I'm assuming) is not the same? I don't suppose this is like the difference between print('x') vs return str(x) (to use a Python analogy)?

Answer 1

• cwd: current working directory (a concept, state, or value)
• pwd: print working directory (a command)

Part of the confusion may be that in some shells $PWD is actually the current working directory name, and pwd is a command to display it (similar to echo "$PWD" where available). At the library level, pwd can be implemented by a call to getcwd(3).