NAME

chdir − change current working directory

SYNOPSIS

int chdir(const char ∗path);

DESCRIPTION

The chdir function causes the directory indicated by path to become the current working directory; that is, the starting point assumed for pathnames not beginning with “/”. 

If the chdir function fails, the current working directory is left unchanged. 

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

RETURN VALUE

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

ERRORS

If any of the following conditions occurs, the chdir function returns -1 and sets errno to the corresponding value:

[EACCES] Search permission is denied for some component of the pathname. 

[EFAULT] The path argument points outside the process’s allocated address space. 

[EINVAL] The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set. 

[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 path exceeds 255 characters, or the entire pathname exceeds 1023 characters.  For POSIX applications these values are given by the constants {NAME_MAX} and {PATH_MAX}, respectively. 

[ENOENT] The named directory does not exist or path is an empty string. 

[ENOTDIR] A component of is not a directory. 

SEE ALSO

chroot(2), getwd(3) or getcwd(3P)

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  August 1, 1992