# Moving Around the System

A defining characteristic of a shell is the ability to navigate and interact with the filesystem. Nushell is, of course, no exception. Here are some common commands you might use when interacting with the filesystem:

## Viewing Directory Contents

```nu
ls
```

As seen in the Quick Tour, the [`ls`](/commands/docs/ls.md) command returns the contents of a directory. Nushell's `ls` will return the contents as a [table](types_of_data.html#tables).

The [`ls`](/commands/docs/ls.md) command also takes an optional argument to change what you'd like to view. For example, we can list the files that end in ".md"

```nu
ls *.md
# => ╭───┬────────────────────┬──────┬──────────┬──────────────╮
# => │ # │        name        │ type │   size   │   modified   │
# => ├───┼────────────────────┼──────┼──────────┼──────────────┤
# => │ 0 │ CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md │ file │  3.4 KiB │ 9 months ago │
# => │ 1 │ CONTRIBUTING.md    │ file │ 11.0 KiB │ 5 months ago │
# => │ 2 │ README.md          │ file │ 12.0 KiB │ 6 days ago   │
# => │ 3 │ SECURITY.md        │ file │  2.6 KiB │ 2 months ago │
# => ╰───┴────────────────────┴──────┴──────────┴──────────────╯
```

## Glob Patterns (wildcards)

The asterisk (`*`) in the above optional argument `*.md` is sometimes called a wildcard or a glob. It lets us match anything. You can read this glob `*.md` as _"match any filename, so long as it ends with '.md'."_

The most general glob is `*`, which will match all paths. More often, you'll see this pattern used as part of another pattern, for example `*.bak` and `temp*`.

Nushell also supports a double `*` which will traverse paths that are nested inside of other directories. For example, `ls **/*` will list all the non-hidden paths nested under the current directory.

```nu
ls **/*.md
# => ╭───┬───────────────────────────────┬──────┬──────────┬──────────────╮
# => │ # │             name              │ type │   size   │   modified   │
# => ├───┼───────────────────────────────┼──────┼──────────┼──────────────┤
# => │ 0 │ CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md            │ file │  3.4 KiB │ 5 months ago │
# => │ 1 │ CONTRIBUTING.md               │ file │ 11.0 KiB │ a month ago  │
# => │ 2 │ README.md                     │ file │ 12.0 KiB │ a month ago  │
# => │ 3 │ SECURITY.md                   │ file │  2.6 KiB │ 5 hours ago  │
# => │ 4 │ benches/README.md             │ file │    249 B │ 2 months ago │
# => │ 5 │ crates/README.md              │ file │    795 B │ 5 months ago │
# => │ 6 │ crates/nu-cli/README.md       │ file │    388 B │ 5 hours ago  │
# => │ 7 │ crates/nu-cmd-base/README.md  │ file │    262 B │ 5 hours ago  │
# => │ 8 │ crates/nu-cmd-extra/README.md │ file │    669 B │ 2 months ago │
# => │ 9 │ crates/nu-cmd-lang/README.md  │ file │  1.5 KiB │ a month ago  │
# => ╰───┴───────────────────────────────┴──────┴──────────┴──────────────╯
```

Here, we're looking for any file that ends with ".md". The double-asterisks further specify _"in any directory starting from here."_

Nushell's globbing syntax not only supports `*`, but also matching [single characters with `?` and character groups with `[...]`](https://docs.rs/nu-glob/latest/nu_glob/struct.Pattern.html).

Escaping the `*`, `?`, and `[]` patterns works by enclosing them in a single-quoted, double-quoted, or
[raw string](working_with_strings.md#raw-strings). For example, to show the contents of a directory named
`[slug]`, use `ls "[slug]"` or `ls '[slug]'`.

However, _backtick_ quoted strings do not escape globs. For example, compare the following scenarios:

1. Unquoted: Glob pattern

   An unquoted [bare word string](working_with_strings.html#bare-word-strings) with glob characters is interpreted as a glob pattern, so the following will remove all files in the current directory that contain
   `myfile` as any part of the filename:

   ```nu
   rm *myfile*
   ```

2. Quoted: String literal with asterisks

   When quoting with single or double quotes, or using a [raw string](working_with_strings.html#raw-strings), a _string_ with the literal, escaped asterisks (or other glob characters) is passed to the command. The result is not a glob. The following command will only remove a file literally named `*myfile*` (including the asterisks). Other files with `myfile` in the name are not affected: