1.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 11.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 12.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 13.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 14.\" without specific prior written permission. 15.\" 16.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 17.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 18.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 19.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 20.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 21.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 22.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 23.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 24.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 25.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 26.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 27.\" 28.\" @(#)chdir.2 8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93 29.\" $FreeBSD$ 30.\" 31.Dd December 1, 2017 32.Dt CHDIR 2 33.Os 34.Sh NAME 35.Nm chdir , 36.Nm fchdir 37.Nd change current working directory 38.Sh LIBRARY 39.Lb libc 40.Sh SYNOPSIS 41.In unistd.h 42.Ft int 43.Fn chdir "const char *path" 44.Ft int 45.Fn fchdir "int fd" 46.Sh DESCRIPTION 47The 48.Fa path 49argument points to the pathname of a directory. 50The 51.Fn chdir 52system call 53causes the named directory 54to become the current working directory, that is, 55the starting point for path searches of pathnames not beginning with 56a slash, 57.Ql / . 58.Pp 59The 60.Fn fchdir 61system call 62causes the directory referenced by 63.Fa fd 64to become the current working directory, 65the starting point for path searches of pathnames not beginning with 66a slash, 67.Ql / . 68.Pp 69In order for a directory to become the current directory, 70a process must have execute (search) access to the directory. 71.Sh RETURN VALUES 72.Rv -std 73.Sh ERRORS 74The 75.Fn chdir 76system call 77will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if 78one or more of the following are true: 79.Bl -tag -width Er 80.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 81A component of the path prefix is not a directory. 82.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG 83A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, 84or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters. 85.It Bq Er ENOENT 86The named directory does not exist. 87.It Bq Er ELOOP 88Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 89.It Bq Er EACCES 90Search permission is denied for any component of 91the path name. 92.It Bq Er EFAULT 93The 94.Fa path 95argument 96points outside the process's allocated address space. 97.It Bq Er EIO 98An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. 99.El 100.Pp 101The 102.Fn fchdir 103system call 104will fail and the current working directory will be unchanged if 105one or more of the following are true: 106.Bl -tag -width Er 107.It Bq Er EACCES 108Search permission is denied for the directory referenced by the 109file descriptor. 110.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 111The file descriptor does not reference a directory. 112.It Bq Er EBADF 113The argument 114.Fa fd 115is not a valid file descriptor. 116.El 117.Sh SEE ALSO 118.Xr chroot 2 119.Sh STANDARDS 120The 121.Fn chdir 122system call is expected to conform to 123.St -p1003.1-90 . 124.Sh HISTORY 125The 126.Fn chdir 127system call appeared in 128.At v1 . 129The 130.Fn fchdir 131system call appeared in 132.Bx 4.2 . 133