NodeJs child_process working directory

Question

I am trying to execute a child process in a different directory then the one of its parent.

var exec = require('child_process').exec;

exec(
    'pwd',
    {
        cdw: someDirectoryVariable
    },
    function(error, stdout, stderr) {
        // ...
    }
);

I'm doing the above (though of course running "pwd" is not what I want to do in the end). This will end up writing the pwd of the parent process to stdout, regardless of what value I provided to the cdw option.

What am I missing?

(I did make sure the path passed as cwd option actually exists)

Solution

The option is short for current working directory, and is spelled cwd, not cdw.

var exec = require('child_process').exec;
exec('pwd', {
  cwd: '/home/user/directory'
}, function(error, stdout, stderr) {
  // work with result
});

Comments

[Jeroen De Dauw]

Oh.. typo.. Now wondering how I did not spot that. Fixing the typo made the code work as expected.

[Matt Westlake]

Doesn't seem to be working. On windows 10, not sure if that matters

[vbtheory]

@Matt Westlake I know I'm probably late but I think on Windows you need to execute cd instead of pwd like so var cmd = `cd foo/bar ⏎ ls`; var exec = require('child_process').exec; ...

[Lennon McLean]

@Jeroen De Dauw lol, we've all been there

[Clonkex]

@vbtheory Worth noting that there's also no ls on Windows (it's dir instead) and directory separators are backslashes, not forward slashes.

[Amir Alam]

can i enter the windows path "c:\\"? its not working for me