CHDIR(2) System Calls Manual CHDIR(2)

chdir, fchdir — change current working directory

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

#include <unistd.h>

int
chdir(const char *path);

int
fchdir(int fd);

The path argument points to the pathname of a directory. The () 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 () 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.

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

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

[]
Search permission is denied for any component of the path name.
[]
path points outside the process's allocated address space.
[]
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
[]
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
[]
A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} characters.
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The named directory does not exist.
[]
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:

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Search permission is denied for the directory referenced by the file descriptor.
[]
The argument fd is not a valid file descriptor.
[]
The file descriptor does not reference a directory.
[]
The argument fd references a directory which is not at or below the current process's root directory.

chroot(2), getcwd(3)

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

A chdir() function call appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX. The fchdir() function call appeared in 4.2BSD.

September 1, 2019 NetBSD 11.0