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I'm starting out on some Linux bash scripting and I'm trying to get the username so I can cd to that user's Desktop:

cd /home/$(user I'm currently using)/Desktop

The code should be similar to the above to my understanding. What kind of terminal command would return just the name of the user I'm using?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Aug 21 '12 at 8:45

4 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

The command you were looking for is whoami.

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Cool, thanks this was useful! – Mantas Aug 20 '12 at 12:32
up vote 7 down vote

You're probably just looking for cd ~/Desktop.

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Thank you very much sir, was silly to miss that! – Mantas Aug 20 '12 at 12:29
up vote -1 down vote

who is the command for you which is a shortform for whoami

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2  
who is not short form for whoami who shows who are all logged on the system(means in tty1,tty2 and so on) whoami means who is currently using the system (who is running this command, it always shows your name only because you are running this command, if other person run this command then it will show his name) It always print single name. – max Aug 23 '12 at 11:01
up vote 0 down vote

See Here

[max@localhost ~]$ echo $USER

max

This will print the name of the user who currently logged in the terminal

[max@localhost ~]$ su -

Password:

[root@localhost ~]# echo $USER

root

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