cd++: turbo-charging the humble cd command

Why is cd so dumb?

Linux/Unix users spend a lot of time changing directories. Why isn't cd more helpful? Why is there no "recent directories" list? (There is, but it's hidden away and hard to discover and use) Why can't it keep track of my favorites? Why do I spend so much time in a loop of "type a few chars, hit tab" until I get back to the same place I've been 100 times before?

While it's true that a single directory change is usually quick and relatively painless, there's two dark truths waiting to be noticed:

• One changes directories many times a day, often revisiting the same folders repeatedly. This is annoying and more time-consuming than we'd like to admit.
• Some directories are buried deep in a tree and... tell me again why do I have to spend so much of my life seeking them out?

cd++ is all about reducing the friction of the humble directory change command in bash. It's not sexy, it doesn't involve machine learning or distributed edge-network content optimization. Nobody ever got rich or famous by making it easier to change directories. This is just a few simple observations, a bit of shell script and Python, and many years of suffering the annoyance of entering commands like this, over and over each day:

cd ~/my-project/base/src/include/lxv/ver102-32992/imports/__generated__/foo

cd++ to the rescue:

This tool replaces the default cd behavior with something that works the same way for the most common and ordinary cases, but has magical powers beyond that:

• Add a long dir to the index:

  tjoe@my-pc:.../etc$  cd -a
  /home/tjoe/projects/fishhead/common/jsvsa/build/etc added/updated to /home/tjoe11/.tox-index:1

  Afterwards, you can go back to that dir with just cd jsv -- or any unique sequence of chars which match the directory name

• Quick resolution of ambiguous dir names: If you have multiple directories in your index which match the cd [arg] search text, cd++ will present the choices and you can choose the correct one with minimal keyboard entry:

  

• Many other handy features (see usage examples below or run cd --help)

Installation:

curl -L https://github.com/sanekits/cdpp/releases/download/1.0.0/cdpp-setup-1.0.0.sh \
    -o ~/tmp$$.sh && bash ~/tmp$$.sh && rm ~/tmp$$.sh

Alternate method:

• Download the latest version of cdpp-setup-1.0.0.sh

• Run the self-extracting setup:

user@laptop$ cd ~/Downloads && ./cdpp-setup-1.0.0.sh

Configuration (Optional)

• Examine and customize ~/.cdpprc for config details

How does it work?

There's four strategies combined in cd++:

• Be smart about CDPATH and have some helpers;
• Use pushd automatically when it makes sense to do so;
• Provide aliases to speed up dumb stuff (e.g. cd ../../../);
• Use an index to track long/obscure paths that are often project-specific

For a user willing to do a bit of mindset-and-habit-changing, cd++ can greatly reduce the effort spent moving around the file system, freeing up time for more interesting work.

Usage examples:

• cd /usr/bin --> Nothing new here. cd still works as expected, whenever practical.
• cd Down<tab> --> Issued from 10 levels deep, let's go up to ~/Downloads without typing the ~/ or the full dir name. Let CDPATH and autocomplete do what they're good at.
• .3 --> Don't ever type ../../../ again. There's aliases for .1 thru .6. (Why isn't this built-in to bash?)
• dirs --> List contents of bash DIRSTACK and choose one of the recent entries to go back there.
• cd site nsmith --> For more obscure (but indexed!) project-specific dirs, first do a smart search for *site* and then another smart search for the sub-indexed directory matching *nsmith*. You can have as many indexes as you like.
  The default top-level index is ~/.tox-index. You decide what gets indexed. If cd can't resolve its argument with CDPATH, it forwards the command to tox, which is a python-powered index search and maintenance utility.
  If tox finds multiple candidate matches, they're presented to the user for quick-pick menu selection.

Also:

• cd++ uses pushd automatically for "more distant" moves, so you can get back with popd (or the alias .p)
• cd --help can be used for quick command / option reminders
• cdpath, cdpath_add, and cdpath_reset streamline maintenance of CDPATH

Tips:

• If you think cd is doing the wrong thing, run builtin cd <args> to see if bash agrees with you.
• to has its own --help and can be used independently of cd++
• The comments in ~/.cdpprc can help you optimize for your working preferences.