NAME

chdir, fchdir — change current working directory

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int
chdir(const char *path);

int
fchdir(int fd);

DESCRIPTION

The path argument points to the pathname of a directory. The chdir() function causes the named directory to become the current working directory, that is, the starting point for path searches of pathnames not beginning with a slash, ‘/’.

The fchdir() function causes the directory referenced by fd to become the current working directory, the starting point for path searches of pathnames not beginning with a slash, ‘/’.

In order for a directory to become the current directory, a process must have execute (search) access to the directory.

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

chdir() will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if one or more of the following are true:

[EACCES]

Search permission is denied for any component of the path name.

[EFAULT]

path points outside the process's allocated address space.

[EIO]

An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

[ELOOP]

Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

[ENAMETOOLONG]

A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} characters.

[ENOENT]

The named directory does not exist.

[ENOTDIR]

A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

fchdir() will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if one or more of the following are true:

[EACCES]

Search permission is denied for the directory referenced by the file descriptor.

[EBADF]

The argument fd is not a valid file descriptor.

[ENOTDIR]

The file descriptor does not reference a directory.

[EPERM]

The argument fd references a directory which is not at or below the current process's root directory.

SEE ALSO

chroot(2), getcwd(3)

STANDARDS

The chdir() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 (“POSIX.1”).

HISTORY

The fchdir() function call appeared in 4.2BSD.