chdir in perl using two strings: chdir "/home/$dir1/$dir2"

Question

I have two strings: $dir1 and $dir2. I want to use chdir as shown below:

chdir "/home/$dir1/$dir2";

when I try this it doesn't change the directory. I checked the current working directory same as before

Is there any way to do this?

you can check your "current working directory" using `cwd` from [Cwd](https://perldoc.perl.org/Cwd.html) module — zdim, Dec 09 '19 at 17:57
If you actually tried that and it didn't work, I bet you have a newline at the end of one of your variables. — ysth, Dec 10 '19 at 04:24
Please show us more of your code. How are you testing that the `chdir` is successful? — Dave Cross, Dec 10 '19 at 09:33
Are you aware that a process cannot change the directory of its parent process? — Dave Cross, Dec 10 '19 at 09:33

brian d foy · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-09T23:01:52.333

Typically I write that as:

use v5.10;
use File::Spec::Functions;

my $dir = catfile( '/home', $dir1, $dir2 );
die "Dir <$dir> isn't a directory or doesn't exist" unless -e -d $dir;
chdir $dir or die "Could not change to <$dir>: $!";

Whenever you do something with the system, check the results to ensure it happened.

And, curiously, I didn't realize that Pearson's sample chapter of my book Effective Perl Programming is the one that covers stacked file test operators.

chdir in perl using two strings: chdir "/home/$dir1/$dir2"

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