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### 35.8 Current Working Directory

— Command: cd dir
— Command: chdir dir

> Change the current working directory to dir. If dir is omitted, the current directory is changed to the user's home directory. For example,

>               cd ~/octave

> Changes the current working directory to `~/octave`. If the directory does not exist, an error message is printed and the working directory is not changed.

> See also: mkdir, rmdir, dir.

— Command: ls options

> List directory contents. For example,

>               ls -l
>               -| total 12
>               -| -rw-r--r--   1 jwe  users  4488 Aug 19 04:02 foo.m
>               -| -rw-r--r--   1 jwe  users  1315 Aug 17 23:14 bar.m

> The `dir` and `ls` commands are implemented by calling your system's directory listing command, so the available options may vary from system to system.

> See also: dir, stat, readdir, glob, filesep, ls_command.

— Function File: [old_cmd = ls_command (cmd)

> Set or return the shell command used by Octave's `ls` command. The value of cmd must be a character string. With no arguments, simply return the previous value.

> See also: ls.

— Function File: dir (directory)
— Function File: [list] = dir (directory)

> Display file listing for directory directory. If a return value is requested, return a structure array with the fields

>               name
>               bytes
>               date
>               isdir
>               statinfo

> in which `statinfo` is the structure returned from `stat`.

> If directory is not a directory, return information about the named filename. directory may be a list of directories specified either by name or with wildcard characters (like * and ?) which will be expanded with glob.

> Note that for symbolic links, `dir` returns information about the file that a symbolic link points to instead of the link itself. However, if the link points to a nonexistent file, `dir` returns information about the link.

> See also: ls, stat, lstat, readdir, glob, filesep.

— Built-in Function: pwd ()

> Return the current working directory.

> See also: dir, ls.