On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 11:37:59AM -0500, Peng Yu wrote:
> Since pwd is a shell command, when /bin/pwd is actually used? In
> shells that don't have built-in pwd?
The primary reason it exists as a separate program is for strict
conformance to POSIX and other standards, which require the presence of
such a program independent of the shell.
It could be invoked by a shell, as you say; or by someone doing
execlp("pwd", (char *)NULL); (or equivalent) in C. In theory it could
also be invoked by someone doing find . -exec pwd \; but I honestly
can't think of a good reason why anyone would do that.
