Change the current working directory in C++

c++ header portability working-directory
sparkFinder picture sparkFinder · Aug 14, 2010 · Viewed 77.6k times · Source

How can I change my current working directory in C++ in a platform-agnostic way?

I found the direct.h header file, which is Windows compatible, and the unistd.h, which is UNIX/POSIX compatible.

Answer

AndiDog picture AndiDog · Aug 14, 2010

The chdir function works on both POSIX (manpage) and Windows (called _chdir there but an alias chdir exists).

Both implementations return zero on success and -1 on error. As you can see in the manpage, more distinguished errno values are possible in the POSIX variant, but that shouldn't really make a difference for most use cases.

Related questions

Using G++ to compile multiple .cpp and .h files

I've just inherited some C++ code that was written poorly with one cpp file which contained the main and a bunch of other functions. There are also .h files that contain classes and their function definitions. Until now the program …

Read More
*.h or *.hpp for your class definitions

I've always used a *.h file for my class definitions, but after reading some boost library code, I realised they all use *.hpp. I've always had an aversion to that file extension, I think mainly because I'm not used to …

Read More
Where does Visual Studio look for C++ header files?

I checked out a copy of a C++ application from SourceForge (HoboCopy, if you're curious) and tried to compile it. Visual Studio tells me that it can't find a particular header file. I found the file in the source tree, …

Read More