Equivalent of shell 'cd' command to change the working directory?

You can change the working directory with:

import os

os.chdir(path)

You should be careful that changing the directory may result in destructive changes your code applies in the new location. Potentially worse still, do not catch exceptions such as WindowsError and OSError after changing directory as that may mean destructive changes are applied in the old location!

If you're on Python 3.11 or newer, then consider using this context manager to ensure you return to the original working directory when you're done:

from contextlib import chdir

with chdir(path):
    # do stuff here

If you're on an older version of Python, Brian M. Hunt's answer shows how to roll your own context manager: his answer.

Changing the current working directory in a subprocess does not change the current working directory in the parent process. This is true of the Python interpreter as well. You cannot use os.chdir() to change the CWD of the calling process.

Here's an example of a context manager to change the working directory. It is simpler than an ActiveState version referred to elsewhere, but this gets the job done.

Context Manager: cd

import os

class cd:
    """Context manager for changing the current working directory"""
    def __init__(self, newPath):
        self.newPath = os.path.expanduser(newPath)

    def __enter__(self):
        self.savedPath = os.getcwd()
        os.chdir(self.newPath)

    def __exit__(self, etype, value, traceback):
        os.chdir(self.savedPath)

Or try the more concise equivalent(below), using ContextManager.

Example

import subprocess # just to call an arbitrary command e.g. 'ls'

# enter the directory like this:
with cd("~/Library"):
   # we are in ~/Library
   subprocess.call("ls")

# outside the context manager we are back wherever we started.

I would use os.chdir like this:

os.chdir("/path/to/change/to")

By the way, if you need to figure out your current path, use os.getcwd().

More here

If you're using a relatively new version of Python, you can also use a context manager, such as this one:

from __future__ import with_statement
from grizzled.os import working_directory

with working_directory(path_to_directory):
    # code in here occurs within the directory

# code here is in the original directory

UPDATE

If you prefer to roll your own:

import os
from contextlib import contextmanager

@contextmanager
def working_directory(directory):
    owd = os.getcwd()
    try:
        os.chdir(directory)
        yield directory
    finally:
        os.chdir(owd)