How do I cd into a directory called "."?

Question

I'm doing OverTheWire and looking for a password hidden somewhere on the server. I did ls -a to view the hidden contents inside the current directory and received this as the output:

.    ..    .bash_logout    .bashrc    .profile

I checked the file type of . and it says it's a directory:

bandit6@bandit: file ./.
./.: directory

I then tried to cd into this directory but I didn't have any success, it accepted the command but I just stayed in the same directory.

I'm not sure if the syntax is wrong or if the . and .. directories refer to the current and parent directory respectively.

Sorry if this is painfully obvious, but I am new to the command line.

Does this answer your question? When you type "ls -a", what is the significance of "." and ".."? — guest, May 29 '20 at 08:29
While this question may seem stupid to an expert. It is very clever: The OP has been exploring, and discovered something. They have worked out what it does, but not why. — ctrl-alt-delor, May 29 '20 at 10:18

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited May 29 '20 at 11:02

As per comment, . is your local dir.

It is mainly use in command where you need to specify a directory, like copying file

cp /etc/hosts .

(It will copy /etc/hosts to local dir.) Of course cd . will stay on same directory, this can be useful in shell:

#!/bin/bash
# stuff before
cd "$1"
# other stuff after

You can call either

my-bash /data/foo

or

my-bash .

Another rare usecase is if the current directory was renamed by another session or process. Then, pwd returns the old directory name. To update this, just execute cd ..

How do I cd into a directory called "."?

1 Answers1