How do I change the working directory in Python?

Question

cd is the shell command to change the working directory.

How do I change the current working directory in Python?

Answer 1

os.chdir() is the Pythonic version of cd.

Answer 2

cd() is easy to write using a generator and a decorator.

from contextlib import contextmanager
import os

@contextmanager
def cd(newdir):
    prevdir = os.getcwd()
    os.chdir(os.path.expanduser(newdir))
    try:
        yield
    finally:
        os.chdir(prevdir)

Then, the directory is reverted even after an exception is thrown:

os.chdir('/home')

with cd('/tmp'):
    # ...
    raise Exception("There's no place like home.")
# Directory is now back to '/home'.