proc_pid_cwd(5)

💖 proc_pid_cwd — the group chat version 💖

okay so this is proc_pid_cwd(5) from the File Formats Manual, and bestie, it's a short one but it's so useful. let's get into it 🦋

---

✨ NAME ✨

/proc/pid/cwd — a symbolic link to the current working directory 👑

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

• /proc/pid/cwd — this is a symbolic link to the current working directory of the process. that's it. that's the whole vibe. it's just a lil pointer to where that process is standing right now 🎀

so like, say you wanna know where process 20 is hanging out. you can literally just do this:

$ cd /proc/20/cwd; pwd -P

and boom, pwd -P tells you the real path, no symlink games. iconic. 💅

⚠️ okay important caveat for the multithreaded girlies: in a multithreaded process, the contents of this symbolic link are not available if the main thread has already terminated (typically by calling pthread_exit(3)). so if main thread dipped, this link is giving nothing. 😭

also, permission-wise: whether you're allowed to dereference or read (readlink(2)) this symbolic link is governed by a ptrace access mode PTRACE_MODE_READ_FSCREDS check. see ptrace(2). so it's not just your perms, it's the ptrace access mode rules. iykyk 🔥

---

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

• proc(5)

---

and that's the whole page, bestie! no cap, it's short but it slays. this was from Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2026-02-08 — so yeah, fresh off the press ⭐ go forth and cd into your processes' lives (respectfully) 🧚💜