6.5. Your program's working directory

Each time you start your program with run, it inherits its working directory from the current working directory of gdb. The gdb working directory is initially whatever it inherited from its parent process (typically the shell), but you can specify a new working directory in gdb with the cd command.

The gdb working directory also serves as a default for the commands that specify files for gdb to operate on. Refer to Section 17.1 Commands to specify files.