$PWD vs. pwd regarding portability

Question

I\'m writing a shell script which parses the path of the current working directory (printing a like of all basenames above the current directory).

So far, I\'ve been usi

Answer 1

From that forum article, "$PWD vs `pwd`" which compares AIX 4.2.1, AIX 6, Sparc Solaris 10 and Redhat 5 enterprise with this regard:

• there is no difference between $PWD and builtin pwd,

• there is no difference between builtin pwd -P and /usr/bin/pwd.

The former shows working directory with names of symbolic links whereas the latter displays actual path.

The only discrepancy is that external command is in /usr/bin in most systems and /bin in Redhat.