How to get the current directory in a C program?

Question

I am making the C program where I need to get a directory that this program is started from. This program is written on UNIX computers. I have been looking at the opendir() and telldir(), but the telldir() returns the off_t (long int), but it doesn't help me.

How can I get a current path in the string (char array)?

Answer 1

Have you had the look at getcwd()?

#include <unistd.h>

char *getcwd(char *buf, size_t size);

Simple example:

#include <unistd.h>

#include <stdio.h>

#include <limits.h>

int main() {

   char cwd[PATH_MAX];

   if (getcwd(cwd, sizeof(cwd)) != NULL) {

       printf("Current working dir: %s\n", cwd);

   } else {

       perror("getcwd() error");

       return 1;

   }

   return 0;

}

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