change_directory

strycnine · 08-29-2009, 05:58 AM

Hi, I have a problem changing the directory.
I made a program that at some point it has to change directory to, for example, /media/disk-1

I made a test with this program:

include <stdlib.h>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main(void)
{
if(setenv("PWD", "/media/disk-1", 1) != 0)
{
cerr << "eroare la modificare" << endl;
}
else
{
cout << getenv("PWD") << endl;
}

return (EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

$ ./pwd
/media/disk-1

but the directory doesn't change. Where did I do wrong?

please help

Thx

catkin · 08-29-2009, 06:08 AM

Changing $PWD doesn't change directory.

Edit:

It works the other way around; changing directory changes environment variable PWD.

In C++, you can change directory with the chdir() function, see this LQ thread.

RaptorX · 08-29-2009, 06:58 AM

The problem is that $PWD is the variable that contains the CURRENT WORKING DIRECTORY, which measn that if you are in /home and you cd to $PWD what you are actually saying is cd /home... which obviously will leave you in the same place.

ex:

Quote:

[~/Desktop]$ echo $PWD
/home/raptorx/Desktop
[~/Desktop]$ cd $PWD
[~/Desktop]$ echo $?
0
[~/Desktop]$

you can see that the cd command exits with code 0, which means that it worked fine... but we stay in the same directory for obvious reasons.