ChDir Procedure

ChDir Procedure

Class

Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileSystem

Syntax

 ChDir(   path)

path (required; String): The path of the directory to set as the new default directory

Description

Changes the current working (default) directory.

Rules at a Glance

path can be an absolute or relative reference.
Changing the default directory does not change the default drive; it only changes a particular drive's default directory.

Example

 ChDir("c:\program files\my folder\") ChDir("..") 'c:\program files is now the default directory.

Programming Tips and Gotchas

The single dot ( "." ) represents the current directory and the double dot ( ".." ) represents the parent of the current directory. If the root directory is the current directory, the statement:
```
 ChDir("..") 
```
does not change the current directory and does not produce a syntax error.
If path is not found, or a FileNotFoundExeception exception, 76, "Path not found," is generated. However, if path refers to another machine on the network, error 75, "Path/File access error," is generated.
Although you can use a network path such as \\NTSERV1\d$\TestDir\ to change the current directory on the network admin share \\NTSERV1\d$ , you can't access this drive using ChDrive without having the drive mapped to a drive letter, which makes using network paths with ChDir a little pointless!
Use CurDir to determine the current directory for a particular drive.

VB.NET/VB 6 Differences

In VB.NET, ChDir is implemented as a procedure (a method of the FileSystem class). In VB 6, it is implemented as a statement. As a result, the VB.NET version requires parentheses around the path argument.