The current working directory, also known as the present working directory, is the location on the file system where the executing program is located and operates from. When working with files and directories in C++, it is important to determine the current working directory to find the resource files. In this article, we will learn how to get the current directory in C++.

Get Current Working Directory in C++

To get the current working directory in C++, we can use the getcwd() function provided by the <direct.h>header. Below is the syntax to use the getcwd function:

Syntax of getcwd()

char *_getcwd(char *buffer, size_t size);

where:

• buffer: is a character array that will be used to store the absolute path of the current working directory.
• size: denotes the maximum length of the buffer array.

C++ Program to get Current Working Directory in Windows Based Systems

The following program illustrates how we can get the current working directory in windows using getcwd function in C++:

// C++ Program to get the current working directory
#include <iostream>   
#include <direct.h>   
using namespace std;

int main() {
    // Define a buffer 
    const size_t size = 1024; 
    // Allocate a character array to store the directory path
    char buffer[size];        
    
    // Call _getcwd to get the current working directory and store it in buffer
    if (getcwd(buffer, size) != NULL) {
        // print the current working directory
        cout << "Current working directory: " << buffer << endl;
    } 
    else {
        // If _getcwd returns NULL, print an error message
        cerr << "Error getting current working directory" << endl;
    }
    return 0; 
}

Output

Current working directory: C:\Users\Desktop

Time Complexity: O(1)
Auxiliary Space: O(N), here N denotes the maximum size of the buffer array.

Get Current Directory with std::filesystem Method

We can also find the current directory using the new std::filesystem::current_path() method which was introduced in C++17.

C++ Program to get Current Working Directory using Filesystem

The following program illustrates how we can get the current working directory using std::filesystem::current_path() function in C++:

// C++ Program to get the current working directory
#include <filesystem>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    // finding and printing the current working directory.
    cout << "Current path is " << filesystem::current_path()
         << endl;
    return 0;
}

Output

Current working directory: C:\Users\Desktop

Time Complexity: O(1)
Auxiliary Space: O(N), here N denotes the maximum size of the buffer array.