pwd default behavior

[Simon Wollwage]

While reading the code for /bin/pwd, I noticed that the default behavior
in the code is to assume -P if no arguments are supplied, but according
to POSIX it shoud be -L
(https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/pwd.html)

Is it for convenience reasons or other technical reasons? Seems like an
easy change to make it compliant.

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

It makes very little difference in practice as pwd(1) is usually a shell
built-in, but: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D55146

DES
--
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - d...@FreeBSD.org

[Jin Guojun[VFF]]

It does make some difference because one wants to know where one really
is at :-)

Since there is another command "dirs" which does "pwd -L", so pwd
defaulting to -P makes sense to provide the real location.

-Jin

[Chris Hill]

On Fri, 6 Feb 2026, Jin Guojun[VFF] wrote:

`dirs` exists in csh. In my shell, /bin/sh, there is no `dirs` and `pwd`
defaults to the -L behavior.

--
Chris Hill ch...@monochrome.org

[Jin Guojun[VFF]]

The man page should be updated to reflect the different behaviors
between sh and csh.

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

"Jin Guojun[VFF]" <jgu...@gmail.com> writes:
> The man page should be updated to reflect the different behaviors
> between sh and csh.

No. The pwd manual page is for /bin/pwd. There are separate manual
pages for sh and csh, and yet another that lists shell builtins. Note
also that csh does not have a pwd builtin.