.\" Copyright (c) 1992 Drew Eckhardt (drew@cs.colorado.edu), March 28, 1992
.\"
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.\" Modified by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>
.\" Modified 1993-07-21 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
.\" Modified 1995-04-15 by Michael Chastain <mec@shell.portal.com>:
.\"   Added 'fchdir'. Fixed bugs in error section.
.\" Modified 1996-10-21 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
.\" Modified 1997-08-21 by Joseph S. Myers <jsm28@cam.ac.uk>
.\" Modified 2004-06-23 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
.\"
.TH CHDIR 2 2010-11-25 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
chdir, fchdir \- change working directory
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <unistd.h>
.sp
.BI "int chdir(const char *" path );
.br
.BI "int fchdir(int " fd );
.sp
.in -4n
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
.BR feature_test_macros (7)):
.in
.sp
.BR fchdir ():
.PD 0
.ad l
.RS 4
_BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 500 ||
_XOPEN_SOURCE\ &&\ _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
.br
|| /* Since glibc 2.12: */ _POSIX_C_SOURCE\ >=\ 200809L
.RE
.ad
.PD
.SH DESCRIPTION
.BR chdir ()
changes the current working directory of the calling process to the
directory specified in
.IR path .
.PP
.BR fchdir ()
is identical to
.BR chdir ();
the only difference is that the directory is given as an
open file descriptor.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, zero is returned.
On error, \-1 is returned, and
.I errno
is set appropriately.
.SH ERRORS
Depending on the filesystem, other errors can be returned.
The more
general errors for
.BR chdir ()
are listed below:
.TP
.B EACCES
Search permission is denied for one of the components of
.IR path .
(See also
.BR path_resolution (7).)
.TP
.B EFAULT
.I path
points outside your accessible address space.
.TP
.B EIO
An I/O error occurred.
.TP
.B ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
.IR path .
.TP
.B ENAMETOOLONG
.I path
is too long.
.TP
.B ENOENT
The file does not exist.
.TP
.B ENOMEM
Insufficient kernel memory was available.
.TP
.B ENOTDIR
A component of
.I path
is not a directory.
.PP
The general errors for
.BR fchdir ()
are listed below:
.TP
.B EACCES
Search permission was denied on the directory open on
.IR fd .
.TP
.B EBADF
.I fd
is not a valid file descriptor.
.SH CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.4BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
.SH NOTES
The current working directory is the starting point for interpreting
relative pathnames (those not starting with \(aq/\(aq).

A child process created via
.BR fork (2)
inherits its parent's current working directory.
The current working directory is left unchanged by
.BR execve (2).
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR chroot (2),
.BR getcwd (3),
.BR path_resolution (7)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux
.I man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page,
can be found at
\%http://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.