Better cd for Fish Shell

A better version of cd (and pushd) for your Fish shell.

Install

With fisher:

fisher add eth-p/fish-plugin-better-cd

You can also alias cd to bettercd, if you like:

alias cd bettercd
alias cdun bettercd --undo

If you're familiar with fzf or z, there's a couple of recommended defaults:

Like fzf:

Fuzzily enter part of the path name, and a fzf prompt will be displayed if there are multiple matches.

set -U bettercd_resolve  fzf
set -U bettercd_tiebreak common,fzf

Like z:

Fuzzily enter part of the path name, and the common parent or highest weighted candidate will be used.

set -U bettercd_resolve  z,fzf
set -U bettercd_tiebreak common,z
set -U bettercd_search_z all

Features

Change directories with :/path-relative-to-git-root.
Just like git add, and with completion support.

$ git init
$ mkdir folder
$ mkdir -p other/folder
$ bettercd folder && pwd
/repo/folder

$ bettercd :/other/folder && pwd
/repo/other/folder

Fuzzy find your directories with fzf or z
(requires fzf and either fd or z; must be enabled, see below)

$ mkdir -p foo/bar/baz
$ mkdir -p foo/cat/dog
$ bettercd baz && pwd
/tmp/foo/bar/baz

$ bettercd ../../dog && pwd
/tmp/foo/cat/dog

$ bettercd proj && pwd
/home/me/projects

Undo your previous bettercd.
Did you not mean to change to that directory?

$ pwd
/home/me/desktop

$ bettercd ~/downloads && pwd
/home/me/downloads

$ bettercd --undo && pwd
/home/me/desktop

Configuration

All configuration is done with variables, preferably with set -U for universal variables.

Features

• bettercd_resolve (default: fzf, format: resolver,resolver,...)
  Specifies which resolvers are used for populating the list of candidate directories.

• bettercd_tiebreak (default: common,fzf, format: tiebreaker,tiebreaker,...)
  Specifies which tiebreakers are used for picking between multiple candidate directories.

• bettercd_reporel (default: true, format: true or false)
  If enabled, allows navigating relative to the git repo root with :/path/from/root. Fuzzy matching is also still available for this!

Search Settings

• bettercd_search_depth (default: 4, format: number)
  Specifies how deep of a search the fzf resolver will do.

• bettercd_search_z (default: best, format: all, best or common)
  When using the z resolver, what answers returned by z will be used.

• bettercd_user_search_exclude_paths (format: array)
  Speicifes a list of absolute paths that the fzf resolver will ignore.

• bettercd_user_search_exclude_names (format: array)
  Speicifes a list of file globs that the fzf resolver will ignore.

Tweaks

• bettercd_fzf_args (format: array)
  A list of arguments passed to fzf in the fzf resolver.
• bettercd_fzf_interactive_args (default: something nice, format: array)
  A list of arguments passed to fzf in the fzf tiebreaker.
• bettercd_fd_args (format: array)
  A list of arguments passed to fd in the fzf resolver.

Resolvers

Bettercd's fuzzy matching works by collecting a list of candidate paths for the provided search path. This is done with resolver functions, which take the search path and print out a list of candidate paths.

fzf-resolver

(requires fzf and fd)

The fzf resolver uses a combination of fd and fzf to return a list of fuzzily-matching paths under the target directory. It is very likely to return a ton of candidates, and it's recommended to use the fzf tiebreaker to pick one.

z-resolver

(requires z)

The z resolver uses z to print a list of paths that would be matched by z. You can configure how many paths are returned by setting bettercd_search_z to either best, all, or common.

Custom Resolvers

You can create custom resolvers by defining a __bettercd_resolve_with_RESOLVER function:

function __bettercd_resolve_with_homedir
	for dir in $HOME/*
		printf "%s\n" -- "$HOME"
	end
end

Tiebreakers

Whenever bettercd's fuzzy matching returns more than one candidate, it needs to be narrowed down to a single result. For this, there are tiebreaker functions.

fzf-tiebreaker

(requires fzf)

The fzf tiebreaker displays a list of candidates, and asks you to pick one.

z-tiebreaker

(requires z and perl)

The z tiebreaker uses the z database to pick the highest-weighted directory from the list of candidates. If no candidate is located in the database, the next tiebreaker will be used instead.

common-tiebreaker

The common tiebreaker simply picks the common parent of all candiates, if there is one. This is good for navigating to a parent directory without considering any of its children.

Custom Tiebreakers

You can create custom resolvers by defining a __bettercd_tiebreak_with_TIEBREAKER function:

function __bettercd_tiebreak_with_first
    argparse 'x-nothing' -- $argv || return $status
	echo $argv[1]
end