Set your $CDPATH
appropriately.
Your commonly used directories will likely be unique, so for a contrived
example, suppose you spend a lot of time working with
init’s rc directories:
/home/jp$ cd rc3.d bash: cd: rc3.d: No such file or directory /home/jp$ export CDPATH='.:/etc' /home/jp$ cd rc3.d /etc/rc3.d /etc/rc3.d$ cd rc5.d /etc/rc5.d /etc/rc5.d$ /etc/rc5.d$ cd games bash: cd: games: No such file or directory /etc/rc5.d$ export CDPATH='.:/etc:/usr' /etc/rc5.d$ cd games /usr/games /usr/games$
According to the bash Reference, $CDPATH
is “a colon-separated list of
directories used as a search path for the cd built-in command.” Think of it
as $PATH
for cd.
It’s a little subtle, but can be very handy.
If the argument to cd begins with a slash,
$CDPATH
will not be used. If $CDPATH
is used, the absolute pathname to the
new directory is printed to STDOUT, as in the example above.
Watch out when running bash in POSIX mode (e.g., as /bin/sh or
with --posix
). As the bash
Reference notes:
“If $CDPATH is set, the cd built-in will
not implicitly append the current directory to it. This means that
cd will fail if no valid directory name can be
constructed from any of the entries in $CDPATH
, even if a directory with the same
name as the name given as an argument to cd
exists in the current directory.”
To avoid this, explicitly include . in $CDPATH
. However, if you do that, then
another subtle point noted in the bash Reference comes into
play:
“If a nonempty directory name from $CDPATH
is used, or if '-' is the first
argument, and the directory change is successful, the absolute
pathname of the new working directory is written to the standard
output.”
In other words, pretty much every time you use cd it will echo the new path to STDOUT, which is not the standard behavior.
Common directories to include in $CDPATH
are:
The current directory (see the warning above)
Your home directory
The parent directory
The grandparent directory
A hidden directory containing nothing but symbolic links to other commonly used directories
The above suggestions result in this:
export CDPATH='.:~/:..:../..:~/.dirlinks'
18.227.111.208