chdir-home 1 user commands nosh chdir-homechange working directory to the home directory then chain chdir-home --oknodir next-prog chdir-home is a chain-loading utility that changes its working directory to the value of the HOME environment variable, like the shell built-in chdir command when given no arguments, and then chain loads to next-prog with the execvp3 function. chdir-home places no requirement on the value of the HOME environment variable and uses that value exactly as it stands. It should be an absolute pathname; but a relative pathname is not regarded as an error. next-prog may contain its own command line options, which chdir-home will ignore. If the home directory cannot be changed to, normally chdir-home exits with a non-zero exit status does not chain. Using the --oknodir command-line option causes it to change working directory to the / directory instead and to carry on, akin to the behaviours of login1 programs when a user's home directory is unavailable. The / directory is a "safe" choice for a default home directory inasmuch as it is not expected to contain any "dotfiles" that programs may mistakenly access as if they were in a bona fide home directory. Historically, / actually was the superuser's own home directory, and this would have not been a "safe" choice; but for security reasons the convention changed to the superuser having a distinct home directory (on the root volume) as /root or some such and / is nowadays no longer a bona fide home directory. Unlike the shell built-in chdir command, chdir-home always operates in "physical" mode, and performs no canonicalization of .. or . components. For the benefit of the pwd1 command when its -L command-line option is used, if the path of the directory changed to is an absolute one chdir-home sets the PWD environment variable to that path, and unsets that environment variable if it is a relative path. Also unlike the shell built-in chdir command, chdir-home ignores any CDPATH environment variable, and performs no interpolation for leading ~ characters. chdir1 a chain-loading command that takes an explicit directory name userenv1 userenv-fromenv1 chain-loading commands that specifically set the HOME environment variable Jonathan de Boyne Pollard