cd —
change working directory
Since cd affects the current shell execution
environment, it is always provided as a shell regular built-in. For more
information consult the manual page for the shell in use.
The directory operand is an absolute or
relative pathname which becomes the new working directory. The
interpretation of a relative pathname by cd depends
on the CDPATH environment variable (see below).
The following environment variables affect the execution of
cd:
CDPATH
- A colon-separated list of pathnames that refer to directories. If the
directory operand does not begin with a slash
(‘
/’) character, and the first
component is not dot (‘.’) or
dot-dot (‘..’),
cd searches for the
directory relative to each directory named in the
CDPATH variable, in the order listed. The new
working directory is set to the first matching directory found. An empty
string in place of a directory pathname represents the current directory.
If the new working directory was derived from
CDPATH, it will be printed to the standard
output.
HOME
- If
cd is invoked without arguments and the
HOME environment variable exists and contains a
directory name, that directory becomes the new working directory.
OLDPWD
- Set to the previous working directory after a directory change. Not
supported by csh(1).
PWD
- Set to the current working directory.
The cd utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
The cd command is expected to be IEEE
Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”) compatible.