Getting the Current Directory (pwd)

Command Equivalents

Description

The Get-Location cmdlet, universally used via its pwd alias, gets an object that represents the current working directory. Its default output is a simple display of the path.

This command is functionally identical to pwd in Linux and is essential for orienting yourself in the file system, especially within scripts.

Common Usage

Basic Command

Running the command by itself prints your current path to the console.

pwd

The output will look something like this:

Path
----
C:\Users\YourUser\Documents

Accessing Just the Path String

Although the command returns an object, you often just want the path as a string of text (for use in scripts, for example). You can get this by accessing the Path property of the object.

# The parentheses execute the command first
(Get-Location).Path

This command will output only the raw string, without the Path header:

C:\Users\YourUser\Documents

Use in Scripts

This is commonly used inside scripts to construct full paths to files or other directories relative to the script’s current location.

$currentDir = (Get-Location).Path
$logFile = "$currentDir\logs\application.log"
Write-Host "Log file is located at: $logFile"