Talk:Cd (command)

?
"it is also a Visual Basic function which changes the working directory"

What is the purpose of mentioning this?

If every programming language that has implimented an API to the system call would be mentioned (which is virtually every decent language worth the name) a very long list would be needed here. Therefore I conclude the purpose of the comment is not to be informative but to promote a certain brand. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.213.33.210 (talk) 09:31, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

title
Why is it necessary to have such a complex title? Cd isn't a disambiguation page and even if it was then the correct title of this article would be cd (command). Also, the "C" should not be capitalized. --mav

Dear mav,

I agree, I don't think it makes much sense to capitalize the "C", but I think that wikipedia does that automatically, though I think if you type in the URL without the capital, wikipedia will still take you to the appropriate article.

About the complexity, I think that CD is very important to distinguish in the title, since it may be mistaken with Compact Disk, Certificate of Deposit, or many other acronyms.

You noted it may be changed to "CD (command)" which I agree is better, but that may be confused with another type of command such as an NYPD Command and Dicipline Command (though I'm not sure there is such a thing.)

To generalize more, I agree something like "CLI command" or "Computer command" may work well, but there are already multiple articles in existance like with titles like this this one, including rm, ls, and dir. So, the standardization seems like a good thing to me + it may be helpful to distinguish the major operating systems in the title since rm is for Unix only the way I understand, while cd is for unix and MS-DOS.

Still, if you think that the titles should be generalized more, you may edit them by moving the pages, but I think they're fine.


 * In DOS the command is CHDIR... CD is an abbreviated form. In UNIX it's cd. --Brion


 * Perhaps, but using "cd" in MS-DOS works fine for the same purpose. -- Brandonforgod 06:04 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC)


 * The Wikipedia software is case-sensitive for everything beyond the first letter. So Cd (MS-DOS / Unix command), Cd (MS-DOS / Unix Command), CD (MS-DOS / UNIX command) and Cd (MS-DOS / UNIX command) are all different (CD and cd are also different). We also have a Wikipedia naming convention that frowns on the use of capitals when they are not needed (yet another convention prefers simple titles). In addition, you should read disambiguation to get some pointers on disambiguation (pre-emptive disambiguation isn't really cared for around here). All these conventions aim to balance a reasonable level of ambiguity with page titles that are reasonably easy to link to while writing. IMO the current title has way too much info in it and isn't nearly as useful as a simpler title would be. What is especially weird is that the simplest title, cd, actually redirects here. --mav


 * I don't know if you knew this; this is my first day ever creating Wikipedia entries. So, I admit a newbie status.  You, however, seem to be a quite expereinced Wikipedian.  My first article like this was named ls, refering to the linux command, but it was renamed by another user to "ls (Unix / Linux Command)", or something like that.  I left it because it seemed like a good idea to me.  My brief idea on that was so that when people see that in search results, they may more immediately know what the article refers to.  (Of course, I admit, it seems that the preview in search results may well accomplish that.  Of course, for each of the articles I made like this, I did make the simple title redirect.  That way, at least linking should be easy.  However, if you believe that a simpler title would be much better, please change it.  I expect you know better on this than I.  As I recal, the articles I made like this were rm, ls, and dir.


 * I also moved the article named "Windows 2000" to the name "Microsoft Windows 2000," to try to follow the apparent convention of the article named "Microsoft Windows." Once again, if you think this is error, please change it back.  However, it seems that many simiar articles are named similarly.-- Brandonforgod 06:47 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC)

directory
The recent additional material elaborating on the definition "Directory" in this article Cd (DOS / Unix Command) should better be placed in the Directory article (or maybe a Directory (DOS / Unix)-like article. Bevo 18:22, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Feel free to edit it, I merged another article with a similar title into this one. Interesting, that they were written for entirely different audiences .. I suppose a directory article could easily include cd. -- User:Docu


 * Thanks for the reply. I'll give it some thought and will probably do some editting later tonight or tomorrow. Bevo 02:55, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Title
I noticed that "chdir" and "cd" are both incorporated into this article, with preference and precedence given to "chdir". Why is this? "cd" chronologically preceded "chdir" by decades, and was indeed the inspiration for "chdir". In addition, Unix has been around for longer and is more important that DOS, so one would expect the title of this page to be "cd (command)". If there are no objections, I would not mind moving this page and correcting the broken links. --Maru (talk) 01:12, 25 September 2005 (UTC)


 * On Linux, chdir is the system call that is used to change directories. cd is a shell builtin that uses chdir internally.  (chdir as a system call has been in UNIX as long as cd.) The article should discuss this distinction ... dbenbenn | talk 16:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

PowerShell
"PowerShell is based on the .NET Framework and has a different architecture than previous shells, all of PowerShell's cmdlets like ls, rm etc. run in the shell's process. Of course, this is not true for legacy commands which still run in a separate process." These comments look a little confused to me. Consider: ls and rm are not true commands in PowerShell but only aliases for PowerShell's own equivalents; nor do legacy DOS-style or cmd.exe-style commands like dir and del exist in PowerShell except as aliases. So what is meant by legacy commands here? And in what sense do they "still" run in a separate process - do they do so in cmd.exe - bearing in mind that the article that explained previously that cmd doesn't create subshells as often as unix does? -09:50, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

cd ..
Should we add a section describing the use of  for the current directory and   for the parent directory? I know this applies to many commands and system calls, but I think that information is most relevant here. &mdash;Voidxor (talk) 23:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

strictly speaking
Under DOS, command line cd (as cd or chdir both) behaves as two distinctly different DOS functions: Naaman Brown (talk) 14:42, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * CD      (without parameter) is Get Current Directory (function 47h)
 * <tt>CD name </tt>(with parameter) is Change the Current Directory (function 3Bh).

Program vs Command
The article has wrong conclusion. cd ain't command but a system program what is used to change directory. There ain't commands but programs and command line functions (like pipe). The system programs do not belong to operating system, in contrary they need operating system to run them. Command line shells like Bash ain't needed either to use those system programs. Bash is just one (altough complex) system program itself as well and isn't part of OS either. Suggestion to change the article more like:

''cd, sometimes also available as chdir (change directory), is a system program to change the current working directory on command line programs like such as GNU Bash, zhs, sh. (where if a bare path is given, cd is implied) and it is available to be used by any other program'' Golftheman (talk) 14:11, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * btw just no
 * Porcupo (talk) 00:39, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Origin
Info about where it first appeared would be nice. E.g. in Un*x, it has appeared in Research Unix v7; v6 had only <tt>chdir</tt> (at least according to TUHS images), not sure if it can be made into ref. —Mykhal (talk) 11:32, 6 January 2022 (UTC)