How to get the current directory in a C program?

Question

I'm making a C program where I need to get the directory that the program is started from. This program is written for UNIX computers. I've been looking at opendir() and telldir(), but telldir() returns a off_t (long int), so it really doesn't help me. How can I get the current path in a string (char array)?

Answer 1

Look up the man page for getcwd.

Answer 2

Had a look at getcwd?

   #include <unistd.h>
   char *getcwd(char *buf, size_t size);

Simple example:

   #include <unistd.h>
   #include <stdio.h>
   #include <errno.h>

   int main() {
       char cwd[1024];
       if (getcwd(cwd, sizeof(cwd)) != NULL)
           fprintf(stdout, "Current working dir: %s\n", cwd);
       else
           perror("getcwd() error");
       return 0;
   }