The CD command with “-” argument will change to previous directory. Is there a way to know which directory it is?

Question

The command

cd -

will change the pwd to the last directory.

Is there a way to know which directory it is, so that I'll know where I am CD'ing to?

Answer 1

Yes, it is $OLDPWD.

~$ cd src/
~/src$ cd ..
~$ echo $OLDPWD
/home/$USER/src

Answer 2

The previous directory is saved in $OLDPWD

Answer 3

You can also use ~- (anywhere you can use tilde expansion) instead of $OLDPWD:

# Copy a file from the previous working directory.
cp ~-/file1 .

There is also ~+ for $PWD, which is useful for commands which require an absolute directory:

./configure --prefix ~+/root

Note that things like --prefix=~+/root won't work due to the rules of tilde expansion; use --prefix="$PWD/root" instead.