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Absolute Pathnames
An absolute pathname begins with the root directory and follows the tree branch by branch until the path to the desired directory or file is completed. For example, there is a directory on your system in which most of our system's programs are installed. The path- name of the directory is /usr/bin. This means from the root directory (represented by the leading slash in the pathname) there is a directory called "usr" which contains a direc- tory called "bin".
[me@linuxbox ~]$ cd /usr/bin
[me@linuxbox bin]$ pwd
/usr/bin
[me@linuxbox bin]$ ls
...Listing of many, many files ...
[me@linuxbox ~]$ cd /usr/bin
[me@linuxbox bin]$ pwd
/usr/bin
[me@linuxbox bin]$ ls
...Listing of many, many files ...
Now we can see that we have changed the current working directory to /usr/bin and that it is full of files. Notice how the shell prompt has changed? As a convenience, it is usually set up to automatically display the name of the working directory.