How to list directories "above" working directory

My professor showed me how to list the directories above the current working directory using the cd command. I thought it was cd ..[tab] but this lists commands in my current directory.

3 Answers

I am assuming you just want to list directories on the parent of the current directory, you can use find:

find .. -maxdepth 1 -type d -not -name '..' 

Alternately, you can use ls:

ls -p .. | grep '/$' 

Or shell:

echo ../*/ 

or elaborately:

for i in ../*; do [ -d "$i" ] && echo "$i"; done 

Or in zsh using glob qualifier / (redundant though :)):

echo ../*(/) 

cd .. navigates to directory above your current working directory in the tree.

For example,

home:$ pwd /home home:$ cd .. :$ pwd / 

As for listing directories in the parent directory, heemayl's answer sufficiently covers that. I'll just throw in another one:

 stat ../* --format="%n %F" | awk '/directory/' 

If you want to list contents of "above" working directory (parent directory) use:

ls .. 

However, it shows both files and directories of the parent folder.