Terminal frustration

[m830mr]

so lately I've been using 10.3.9 on an old snow imac (500mhz, 256bm) and decided to teach myself how to use the terminal. So I'm learning how to open and close folders and view their contents when the terminal lists folders being there but when I go to open them it says it dosen't exist. For example, when I go to open a folder named OIDSX by typing "cd /OIDSX" the terminal says, "such a file or folder does not exist" I hit, "ls" and it lists the folder right there!! Terminal is doing this for about half the folders I try to open and it's very frustrating. Does anyone here have any idea whats going on? Are there presets somewhere that have to be changed to allow a folder to be opened in terminal? Any help is appreciated.

 

[plinden]

so lately I've been using 10.3.9 on an old snow imac (500mhz, 256bm) and decided to teach myself how to use the terminal. So I'm learning how to open and close folders and view their contents when the terminal lists folders being there but when I go to open them it says it dosen't exist. For example, when I go to open a folder named OIDSX by typing "cd /OIDSX" the terminal says, "such a file or folder does not exist" I hit, "ls" and it lists the folder right there!! Terminal is doing this for about half the folders I try to open and it's very frustrating. Does anyone here have any idea whats going on? Are there presets somewhere that have to be changed to allow a folder to be opened in terminal? Any help is appreciated.

The root directory (the term "directory" is used for what is represented as a "folder" in a GUI) is "/", so if you type "cd /OIDSX", you are telling the computer to go back to root and look for OIDSX. To view a subdirectory in your current working directory, omit the "/", i.e. "cd OIDSX"

 

[m830mr]

thanks for pointing that out

I've been learning via an online tutorial so I was a bit frustrated there. THanks for bringing that to my attention.