.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991 Regents of the University of California.
.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
.\" @(#)chdir.2 6.7 (Berkeley) %G%
.Nd change current working directory
.Fn chdir "const char *path"
arument points to the pathname of a directory.
causes the named directory
to become the current working directory, that is,
the starting point for path searches of pathnames not beginning with
causes the directory referenced by
to become the current working directory,
the starting point for path searches of pathnames not beginning with
In order for a directory to become the current directory,
a process must have execute (search) access to the directory.
Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned.
Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and
will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if
one or more of the following are true:
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set.
A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
The named directory does not exist.
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
Search permission is denied for any component of
points outside the process's allocated address space.
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if
one or more of the following are true:
Search permission is denied for the directory referenced by the
The file descriptor does not reference a directory.
is not a valid file descriptor.
is expected to conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988