This MSDN article states that getcwd() has been deprecated and that the ISO C++ compatible _getcwd should be used instead, which raises the question: what makes getcwd() not
As others have already pointed out, getcwd is not included in ISO C++, but is part of POSIX/IEEE Std 1003.1.
Microsoft has decided to include some of the most commonly used POSIX functions in their C standard library (but prefix these functions with an underscore to essentially discourage their usage).