How do I run a program with a different working directory from current from Linux shell

Question

Using a Linux shell  how do I start a program with a different working directory from the current working directory   For example  I have a binary file helloworld that creates the file hello-world txt in the current directory    This file is inside of directory  a    Currently  I am in the directory  b  I want to start my program running    a helloworld and get the hello-world txt somewhere in a third directory  c

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If you always want it to go to  C  use an absolute path when you write the file

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Just change the last   amp  amp   into     and it will cd back no matter if the command fails or succeeds   cd SOME PATH  amp  amp  run some command   cd -

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why not keep it simple  cd SOME PATH  amp  amp  run some command  amp  amp  cd -  the last  cd  command will take you back to the last pwd directory  This should work on all  nix systems

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sh -c  cd  c  amp  amp     a helloworld

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from the current directory provide the full path to the script directory to execute the command   root server user home bin script sh

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An option which doesn t require a subshell and is built in to bash   pushd SOME PATH  amp  amp  run stuff  popd    Demo     pwd  home abhijit   pushd  tmp   directory changed   pwd  tmp   popd   pwd  home abhijit

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One way to do that is to create a wrapper shell script   The shell script would change the current directory to  c  then run  a helloworld  Once the shell script exits  the current directory reverts back to  b   Here s a bash shell script example      bin bash cd  c  a helloworld

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Call the program like this    cd  c   a helloworld    The parentheses cause a sub-shell to be spawned  This sub-shell then changes its working directory to  c  then executes helloworld from  a  After the program exits  the sub-shell terminates  returning you to your prompt of the parent shell  in the directory you started from   Error handling  To avoid running the program without having changed the directory  e g  when having misspelled  c  make the execution of helloworld conditional    cd  c  amp  amp   a helloworld    Reducing memory usage  To avoid having the subshell waste memory while hello world executes  call helloworld via exec    cd  c  amp  amp  exec  a helloworld     Thanks to Josh and Juliano for giving tips on improving this answer

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I always think UNIX tools should be written as filters  read input from stdin and write output to stdout   If possible you could change your helloworld binary to write the contents of the text file to stdout rather than a specific file   That way you can use the shell to write your file anywhere    cd   b      a helloworld  gt    c helloworld txt

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Similar to David Schmitt s answer  plus Josh s suggestion  but doesn t leave a shell process running    cd  c  amp  amp  exec  a helloworld    This way is more similar to how you usually run commands on the shell  To see the practical difference  you have to run ps ef from another shell with each solution

User · Answer

If you want to perform this inside your program then I would do something like    include  lt unistd h gt  int main       if chdir   c    lt  0              printf  Failed n         return -1             rest of your program

[linux] How do I run a program with a different working directory from current, from Linux shell?

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