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@(#)chdir.2 8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
.Dd September 1, 2019 .Dt CHDIR 2 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm chdir , .Nm fchdir .Nd change current working directory .Sh LIBRARY .Lb libc .Sh SYNOPSIS n unistd.h .Ft int .Fn chdir "const char *path" .Ft int .Fn fchdir "int fd" .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Fa path argument points to the pathname of a directory. The .Fn 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, .Ql / .
p The .Fn fchdir function causes the directory referenced by .Fa fd to become the current working directory, the starting point for path searches of pathnames not beginning with a slash, .Ql / .
p In order for a directory to become the current directory, a process must have execute (search) access to the directory. .Sh RETURN VALUES Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and .Va errno is set to indicate the error. .Sh ERRORS .Fn chdir will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if one or more of the following are true: l -tag -width Er t Bq Er EACCES Search permission is denied for any component of the path name. t Bq Er EFAULT .Fa path points outside the process's allocated address space. t Bq Er EIO An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. t Bq Er ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. t Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG A component of a pathname exceeded rq Dv NAME_MAX characters, or an entire path name exceeded rq Dv PATH_MAX characters. t Bq Er ENOENT The named directory does not exist. t Bq Er ENOTDIR A component of the path prefix is not a directory. .El
p .Fn fchdir will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if one or more of the following are true: l -tag -width Er t Bq Er EACCES Search permission is denied for the directory referenced by the file descriptor. t Bq Er EBADF The argument .Fa fd is not a valid file descriptor. t Bq Er ENOTDIR The file descriptor does not reference a directory. t Bq Er EPERM The argument .Fa fd references a directory which is not at or below the current process's root directory. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr chroot 2 , .Xr getcwd 3 .Sh STANDARDS The .Fn chdir function conforms to .St -p1003.1-90 . .Sh HISTORY A .Fn chdir function call appeared in .At v1 . The .Fn fchdir function call appeared in x 4.2 .
Indexes created Sat Sep 20 22:09:52 GMT 2025