Superpowered cd

[shawnhcorey]

How to superpower cd:

1. Edit your ~/.bash_aliases and add this line:

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export CDPATH=.:~/.cdpath

2. Source the aliases.

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. ~/.bash_aliases

3. Create the directory ~/.cdpath

4. Change to the directory and add links to directories you want cd to do a quick jump to.

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cd ~/.cdpath
ln -s ~/bin bin

Now you can quickly change to your bin from any other directory:

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cd bin

[Termy]

That's a really cool feature of BASH. My only reservation is that this non-standard approach could lead to confusing and potentially disastrous results, especially if someone else uses your computer. I would put the exported variable in '~/.bashrc', as it's not an alias and not everyone will have a sourced '~/.bash_aliases' file. An alias is something that uses the alias shell builtin.

My preference is to add a cd alias for a given path:

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alias sd="cd /media/$USER"

Well, technically, I use functions and have aliasing completely disabled, but I used to use the above alias. I can see this $CDPATH feature being useful when in a Git repository, where your BASH prompt could set this parameter for when you're in a repository, allowing you to quickly jump around. Then again, the same caution as above applies here too, perhaps more so.

[mikeflan]

not everyone will have a sourced '~/.bash_aliases' file.

I agree. I don't have a '~/.bash_aliases' file on my LM 20.3. Not sure why.

I think the bash alias idea is a good one. I might not need it since I have a home-grown program to start a terminal on almost any directory I normally work with. OTOH it might help me out since these newly spawned terminals don't always have the bash history I would like them to have.

[Termy]

[...]

I'm not even biased against the file, as I've used one for a few years. It's nice to have functions and aliases spread out in different files, especially if you have quite a bulky BASH setup. Now everything like this and more is just in '~/.bash_functions' and the regular BASH stuff in '~/.bashrc'. To each their own, of course. BTW, while these filenames coincide with similar BASH files, it's not listed in BASH's man page as core functionality, so from that I can infer that we shouldn't assume this file is a given or be surprised if it's not present — unless this has since changed.

[mintician]

How about this?

https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide