NAME
chdir
, fchdir
— change current working
directory
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, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable 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:
- [
ENOTDIR
] - A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
- [
ENAMETOOLONG
] - A component of a pathname exceeded
NAME_MAX
characters, or an entire pathname (including the terminating NUL) exceededPATH_MAX
bytes. - [
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 pathname.
- [
EFAULT
] - path points outside the process's allocated address space.
- [
EIO
] - An I/O error occurred while reading from the file system.
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.
- [
ENOTDIR
] - The file descriptor does not reference a directory.
- [
EBADF
] - The argument fd is not a valid file descriptor.
- [
EIO
] - An I/O error occurred while reading from the file system.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The chdir
() and
fchdir
() functions are expected to conform to
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
The chdir
() system call first appeared in
Version 1 AT&T UNIX, and
fchdir
() in 4.3BSD-Reno.