There are two ways that it "won't work", depending on your OS:
- If your OS follows POSIX, then running
sudo cd
will cause the external command "cd" (usually located at/usr/bin/cd
) to execute in a forked process as the root user. That process changes directories successfully. Once that process is done, you will be returned to your regular shell, which is still in the directory where it started.
So sudo cd
runs without error, but does not change the current working directory of your current shell.
(reference: this answer)
- Otherwise, running
sudo cd
will trycause the following to usehappen. Your computer will look through your PATH, trying to find an executable named "cd". It will not find one. (only the shell built-in commandshell built-in command "cd" exists, and that is not an executable file). But sudo cannot run on shell built-in commands Hence, so it willyou get an error. (On Ubuntu, I get the error messagesudo: cd: command not found
.)
So sudo cd
runs with error.