title: How to set a program's working directory?
body: <p>I have a program that exists in the /usr/local/flower directory - flower.rb. It requires loading libraries that also exist in the same directory. I've included this flower directory in my OS environment's path. And my choice of OS is Ubuntu.</p>
  
  <p>When I execute flower.rb from any other directory other than /usr/local/flower, I get error messages indicating the program can't load the libraries that also exist in the /usr/local/flower directory b/c they are being loaded as ./[library] from source code.</p>
  
  <p>I realize I could change the Ruby program to hard code the /usr/local/flower/[libraries], but I'm curious if there's a way to execute this program from my home directory, e.g. /home/seattle, w/o doing this.</p>
  
  <p>Also, when the program executes, it creates output via the -o switch.</p>
  
  <p>My solution was to create a bash script that changed to the /usr/local/flower directory, executed the program, and then return to the PWD directory from where the flower.rb program was called. The problem is the -o switch. If I do a -o [file] the [file] gets written to the /usr/local/flower directory as opposed to where I am when the flower.rb program is run.</p>
  
  <p>What is a good solution for this problem?</p>