Why doesn't CD .. throw an error but other incorrect commands do? How to have it give me an error?

Question

From my understanding, bash is case sensitive. So cd .. would work and CD .. wouldn't.

However, inputting CD .. doesn't throw any errors (it doesn't do anything). Why is that? If I type an incorrect command such as ls-a instead of ls -a the terminal throws an error immediately, but for CD .. nothing is displayed. In fact, I thought it actually worked until I took a closer look at my directory.

Also, if the error is being suppressed by default, is there a way to have it throw an error?

My biggest concern is that no errors are being thrown, and I am under the false impression my commands are actually working making it harder to debug.

Yes, I am. Should I add another tag to clarify? If so which tag? — Govind Rai, Nov 07 '16 at 21:51
No neither CD or cD work. Neither thrown an error either. They do nothing. — Govind Rai, Nov 07 '16 at 21:52
You can add the osx tag. I think there's already a question and answer that's a dup of this. — Mark Plotnick, Nov 07 '16 at 21:53
Interestingly enough both LS and ls work, however. So there seems to be both case sensitivity and case insensitivity... — Govind Rai, Nov 07 '16 at 21:56
Ok, I think this is a dup of Why can Shell builtins not be run with capital letters but other commands can. Can you see if the answer there answers your question? — Mark Plotnick, Nov 07 '16 at 21:58
That's an excellent link, and it actually has the answer to my question--don't think i would've landed upon it using search results. I'll go ahead and mark this as a duplicate. — Govind Rai, Nov 07 '16 at 22:04

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 07 '16 at 21:47

0

I think your distro has an alias or symlink of it. This is the normal behavior (Debian):

$CD ..
mksh: CD: not found

$ CD ..
bash: CD: command not found

answered Nov 07 '16 at 21:47

Ipor Sircer

14,546
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score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 07 '16 at 22:02

-1

That's an Apple bug, your options are;

re-install MacOS with case-sensitive enabled.
report the bug to Apple.
Install Linux

answered Nov 07 '16 at 22:02

user1133275

5,574

Why doesn't CD .. throw an error but other incorrect commands do? How to have it give me an error?

2 Answers2