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PowerShell: The automatic variable $PWD

$pwd stands for present (as in current) working directory.

The type of $pwd is System.Management.Automation.PathInfo.

$pwd and Directory.CurrentWorkingDirectory

The values of $pwd and GetCurrentDirectory() (class system.IO.Directory) are not necessarily the same:

PS: C:\Users\Rene\AppData\Local\Temp> $pwd

Path
----
C:\Users\Rene\AppData\Local\Temp


PS: C:\Users\Rene\AppData\Local\Temp> [System.IO.Directory]::GetCurrentDirectory()
C:\Users\Rene

The reasons are

PowerShell has a notion of working directories in various providers, not only file systems
A PowerShell process can have multiple runspaces, each with a different file system location. Thus, it is not even possible to align the current directory of a PowerShell process with the «current location» of the run spaces.

See also

Typically, $executionContext.SessionState.Path.CurrentLocation has the same value like $pwd, but is read-only, while $pwd is writable.

pwd (not $pwd) is an alias for the get-location cmdLet

$home points to the home directory.

Other automatic variables