Thread: why gentenv("PWD") doesn't work in home directory?

I have this bit of code

Code:

} else if (strcmp(command->cmdArgs[0], "cd") == 0) {
            if (!command->cmdArgs[1]) {
                // no directory was given
                sprintf(dir, "%s", getenv("HOME"));
            } else if (strncmp(command->cmdArgs[1], "/", 1) == 0) {
                sprintf(dir, "%s", command->cmdArgs[1]);
            } else {
                // relative path
                sprintf(dir, "%s/%s", getenv("PWD"), command->cmdArgs[1]);
            }
            
            if (chdir(dir) == -1) {
                printf("no such file or directory\n");
                fflush(stdout);
                status = 1;
//                exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
            }

Let's say I'm in the current directory (e.g /some/test/dir) and I have these files/folders: test1.txt, testDir, and so on

If I pass in "cd testDir" then I am able to cd into the testDir folder with chdir().

But if I do "cd" first to go to HOME, then do mkdir testDir2, then do "cd testDir2" it doesn't work. Perror gives back no such file or directory
I'm executing these commands with execvp().

PWD does not magically keep track of your current directory. It's just an environment variable and needs to be updated each time you change directory if you want it's value to track your current directory.

It will be properly set when you start your shell program (at least if you started it from another shell), but after that it's your job to update it if you want to. An alternative is to copy PWD's value into your own current_directory variable when your program starts up and then just keep current_directory up to date (and ignore PWD after that).