How about you quit with the guessing and just use the return value of the chdir function and the $! variable in string context. 
$ perl -e 'chdir "no existant directory" or die "chdir failed: $!\n"'

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Which outputs this helpful message; 

chdir failed: No such file or directory

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In reply to Re: chdir not working by bruceb3
in thread chdir not working by amitrajvarma

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