 <p>Yes. The current working directory is a property of the process.</p> <hr> <p>To expand on that a little - here are a couple of the relevant <a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/" rel="nofollow">POSIX</a> definitions:</p> <ul> <li><p>The <a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_439" rel="nofollow">current working directory</a> is defined as "a directory, associated with a process, that is used in pathname resolution for pathnames that do not begin with a slash character" (there is more detail in the section on <a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap04.html#tag_04_12" rel="nofollow">pathname resolution</a>).</p></li> <li><p><a href="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/chdir.html" rel="nofollow"><code>chdir()</code></a> is defined to set the current working directory to a pathname.</p></li> </ul> <p>It seems somewhat circular, but there is nothing special about a "pathname" in the context of the argument <code>chdir()</code>; it is subject to pathname resolution as normal.</p>