ok im trying to make the transition from dos to lunix and im finding some of the bits the same and some of it confusing. the one thing im finding hard is in dos when you use the dir comand you can see all directorys and using the cd comand you can navigate round the whole disk. in unix however when you use the ls comand all i see is the home directory . i have an inclination that there is a bin directory and other directorys but i cant see them using ls. also i have found that i can access them using cd /bin. what i want to know is there a comand to see all the directorys or do i just have to know that there is a bin directory

all text needs typos. There there for the reader to find,to distract them from the total lack of content. google it! wasnt the answer to the question i asked so dont be dense and give me that reply!

You're unable to see the /bin directory with ls because you're not actually in root when you log into your terminal. What you do is type the following:

cd /

That will put you in root and when you type ls now you should see bin, opt, usr, var, and so on.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
~Verta

Sorry, I forgot to mention this. In Unix when you use the cd(change directory command) there's two ways to use it.

It can be used to change to a directory relative to the directory you're currently in.

Example: you're currently in root(/) and you want to go to the bin directory.

You simply type: cd bin

This will move you from root into bin because bin is within(relative to) root.

The other way you can change directory is by changing to a directory that is absolute to your current directory.

Example: You're currently in /etc and want to change to bin, but bin is not in /etc.

You would type: cd /bin

This is why you're able to change to bin from when you log on to your terminal because no matter what directory you're currently in, you can jump right to bin by typing cd /bin instead of cd bin.