The current working directory (CWD) or present working directory (PWD) refers to which directory you're currently "in" while using the terminal. Many terminal commands have their behavior affected by what is the current working directory.
To print the current working directory, simply execute the following terminal command [how?]:
pwdThe current working directory is also available through the environment variable PWD, so we can also use the echo command to view it by passing it as the first argument.
echo $PWDAdditionally, the current working directory is part of the shell prompt by default on Linux Mint.
Your shell prompt should be something like john@pc:~$. The tilde (~) in this text code refers to the home directory, and its position in the shell prompt indicates the current working directory. In other words, this shell prompt is telling us that we're currently "in" the home directory. This will affect the behavior of commands like ls that depend on the value of the current working directory.