How to change the current directory in Go

Question

Unlike Execute the 'cd' command for CMD in Go, I just want to really run cd directory_location using Go and change the current directory.

So for example,

Say I am on ~/goproject, and I run, ./main in the terminal, I want to be at ~/goproject2 in the terminal.

I tried

cmd := exec.Command("bash", "-c", "cd", "~/goproject2")
cmd.Run()

But this didn't actually change the current directory.

Answer 1

You want os.Chdir. This function will change the application working directory. If you need to change the shell working directory, your best bet is to look up how cd works and work back from that.

As you have discovered, you cannot use cd to change your current directory from inside an application, but with os.Chdir there is no need for it to work :)

Example usage:

home, _ := os.UserHomeDir()
err := os.Chdir(filepath.Join(home, "goproject2"))
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}

Answer 2

Usually if you need a command to run from a specific directory, you can specify that as the Dir property on the Command, for example:

cmd := exec.Command("myCommand", "arg1", "arg2")
cmd.Dir = "/path/to/work/dir"
cmd.Run()