Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.

@(#)chdir.2 6.3 (Berkeley) 8/26/85

C 4 chdir, fchdir - change current working directory

#include <unistd.h>

int chdir(const char *path)
int fchdir(int fd)

Path is the pathname of a directory. Fd is the file descriptor of a directory. Chdir causes this directory to become the current working directory, the starting point for path names 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 errno is set to indicate the error. Chdir will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if one or more of the following are true:

15 [ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

15 [ENAMETOOLONG] The path name exceeds PATH_MAX characters.

15 [ENOENT] The named directory does not exist.

15 [ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. (Minix-vmd)

15 [EACCES] Search permission is denied for any component of the path name.

15 [EFAULT] Path points outside the process's allocated address space.

15 [EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

chroot (2).