Section 2 · System calls

chdir.2

Package: man-pages

chdir

NAME
LIBRARY
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUE
ERRORS
STANDARDS
HISTORY
NOTES
SEE ALSO

NAME

chdir, fchdir − change working directory

LIBRARY

Standard C library (libc, −lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int chdir(const char *path**);
int fchdir(int** fd**);**

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

fchdir():
_XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
|| /* Since glibc 2.12: */ _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L
|| /* glibc up to and including 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

chdir() changes the current working directory of the calling process to the directory specified in path.

fchdir() is identical to chdir(); the only difference is that the directory is given as an open file descriptor.

RETURN VALUE

On success, zero is returned. On error, −1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

Depending on the filesystem, other errors can be returned. The more general errors for chdir() are listed below:


	EACCES		Search permission is denied for one of the components of path. (See also path_resolution(7).)
	EFAULT		path points outside your accessible address space.
	EIO		An I/O error occurred.
	ELOOP		Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving path.

ENAMETOOLONG

path is too long.


	ENOENT		The directory specified in path does not exist.
	ENOMEM		Insufficient kernel memory was available.

ENOTDIR

A component of path is not a directory.

The general errors for fchdir() are listed below:


	EACCES		Search permission was denied on the directory open on fd.
	EBADF		fd is not a valid file descriptor.

ENOTDIR

fd does not refer to a directory.

STANDARDS

POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY

POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.4BSD.

NOTES

The current working directory is the starting point for interpreting relative pathnames (those not starting with ’/’).

A child process created via fork(2) inherits its parent’s current working directory. The current working directory is left unchanged by execve(2).