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

You can change the working directory with:

import os

os.chdir(path)

There are two best practices to follow when using this method:

1. Catch the exception (WindowsError, OSError) on invalid path. If the exception is thrown, do not perform any recursive operations, especially destructive ones. They will operate on the old path and not the new one.
2. Return to your old directory when you're done. This can be done in an exception-safe manner by wrapping your chdir call in a context manager, like Brian M. Hunt did in 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.

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)

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

os.chdir() is the right way.

import os

abs_path = 'C://a/b/c'
rel_path = './folder'

os.chdir(abs_path)
os.chdir(rel_path)

You can use both with os.chdir(abs_path) or os.chdir(rel_path), there's no need to call os.getcwd() to use a relative path.

If You would like to perform something like "cd.." option, just type:

os.chdir("..")

it is the same as in Windows cmd: cd.. Of course import os is neccessary (e.g type it as 1st line of your code)

The Path objects in path library offer both a context manager and a chdir method for this purpose:

from path import Path

with Path("somewhere"):
    ...

Path("somewhere").chdir()

If you use spyder and love GUI, you can simply click on the folder button on the upper right corner of your screen and navigate through folders/directories you want as current directory. After doing so you can go to the file explorer tab of the window in spyder IDE and you can see all the files/folders present there. to check your current working directory go to the console of spyder IDE and simply type

pwd

it will print the same path as you have selected before.