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() system call 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() system call 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, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

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

[ENOTDIR]: A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
[ENAMETOOLONG]: A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
[ENOENT]: The named directory does not exist.
[ELOOP]: Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
[EACCES]: Search permission is denied for any component of the path name.
[EFAULT]: The path argument points outside the process's allocated address space.
[EIO]: An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
[EINTEGRITY]: Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system.

The fchdir() system call 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.
[ENOTDIR]: The file descriptor does not reference a directory.
[EBADF]: The argument fd is not a valid file descriptor.

STANDARDS

The chdir() system call is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 (“POSIX.1”).

HISTORY

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