explain_chdir_or_die(3)

✨ explain_chdir_or_die — the manual page, but make it cute ✨

okay so this is explain_chdir_or_die, from the Library Functions Manual section of your local man pages 💖 it lives in libexplain and it's basically the "do the thing or DIE trying" version of changing directories. iconic behaviour honestly 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

explain_chdir_or_die — change working directory and report errors

like, that's the whole job bestie. change the dir. if it doesn't work, it TELLS you why in excruciating detail. no silent failures, no mystery, we don't do that here 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

#include <libexplain/chdir.h>
void explain_chdir_or_die(const char * pathname);

that's it. one header, one function, one argument. clean. minimal. ate. ✨

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

so the tea is: explain_chdir_or_die is a lil wrapper that goes and calls the chdir(2) system call for you. and if that call fails?? 😭 it prints a whole explanation to stderr — and that explanation comes straight from explain_chdir(3) — and then the process just... ends itself by calling exit(EXIT_FAILURE). dramatic? yes. useful? also yes. periodt.

this function is meant to be used in a vibe similar to this example right here:

explain_chdir_or_die(pathname);

look at that. one line. no if statement, no checking errno, none of that. just pure "trust the process" energy 🫶

🍓 the arguments

• pathname — the pathname, exactly as to be passed to the chdir(2) system call. like, don't get creative with it, don't add a sneaky trailing slash that wasn't there, just hand it over exactly how chdir(2) expects to receive it. word for word, character for character. iykyk 💅

⭐ Returns:

• this function only returns on success. that's it. that's the whole return policy.
• on failure? it prints an explanation and exits. so like... if you see your code continue past this line, congrats, the chdir worked bestie 🎉

⚠️ ngl this is the key thing to internalise: this function does NOT come back to you on failure. it's not returning an error code. it's not setting errno and politely letting you handle it. it exits the process. so if you have cleanup to do, or files to close, or a cute little error page to show... this is not the function for that. it's the "or die" function. the name is not a metaphor 💀

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

libexplain version 1.4 Copyright (C) 2008 Peter Miller

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okay and that's the whole page bestie 🎀 big thanks to libexplain, version 1.4, and to Peter Miller for the copyright in 2008 — genuinely iconic of them to write a whole library that explains your syscall failures to you so you don't have to suffer in silence 💖 this page was served fresh from the Library Functions Manual, and yes, the footer really does say explain_chdir_or_die(3) one more time on the way out, as a lil treat ✨ bye pookie, go change some directories responsibly 🦋