How do I get the directory that the program is running?

You may be capturing the directory using _getcwd . You can store it in a variable and call it as soon as you need it. getcwd is a POSIX function that is compiled by all POSIX-compatible platforms. you will only need to include the Unist.d headers in UNIX and direct.h in Windows

An Example:

#include <stdio.h>
#ifdef WINDOWS
   #include <direct.h>
   #define Define_CurrentDir _getcwd
#else
   #include <unistd.h>
   #define Define_CurrentDir getcwd
 #endif

        char LOCAL_DIR[FILENAME_MAX];

         if (!Define_CurrentDir(LOCAL_DIR, sizeof(LOCAL_DIR)))
             {
             return errno;
             }

        std::cout << "Diretorio: " << LOCAL_DIR;

For the Windows system you can use the GetModuleFileName() function by going to the hModule is a null value. Something like this (not tested):

#include <iostream>
#include <Windows.h>

using namespace std;

int main ()
{   wchar_t buffer[MAX_PATH]; 
    GetModuleFileName(NULL, buffer, MAX_PATH) ;
    std::cout << buffer << std::endl;
    cin.get();

}

Other operating systems:

• Mac OS X: _NSGetExecutablePath()
• Linux: readlink /proc/self/exe
• Solaris: getexecname()
• FreeBSD: If you have procfs you can use readlink /proc/curproc/file - FreeBSD does not have procfs by default. Another way is to use the getprogname() function in conjunction with another function, realpath() .

References: Font and Font²