[Discuss] efficiently changing directories?

[noel at natnix.com]

Hi Daniel,

My favourite kind of question!  How about a script like this?

~Noel


---------------------------- snip -----------------------
#! /bin/sh
# NAME
# 
#  pcd.sh - look for a directory by prepending paths in CD_PATH
# 
# SYNOPSYS
# 
#  # in your ~/.profile
#  # set a list of commonly-used directories to search
#  export CD_PATH=~/my_projects:my_other_directory
#  # make a function to use pcd.sh to find a directory to cd to using pcd.sh
#  pcd() { cd $(pcd.sh "$1"); }
# 
#  # on the command-line
#  $ pcd mydirectory
# 
# 
# DESCRIPTION
# 
# This echoes the first path that is a directory by checking:
# 
#    1. its first argument itself 
# 
#    2. its first argument with a directory from the CD_PATH environment
#       variable prepended
# 
# The idea is to make a shell utility that you can use to jump to
# subdirectories in commonly-used directories.
# 
# AUTHOR
# 
# Noel Burton-Krahn <noel at burton-krahn.com>
# Aug 8, 2007
#
# 

dir="$1"

IFS=":;"
for p in "" $CD_PATH; do
    if [ "$p" ]; then
	t="$p/$dir"
    else
	t="$dir"
    fi

    if [ -d "$t" ]; then 
	echo "$t"
	exit 0
    fi
done
echo "$dir"
---------------------------- snip -----------------------




On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 09:54:39PM -0700, Daniel M German wrote:
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> as time passes by my directory structures grow bigger and bigger. 
> Does anybody know of a utility or method to change directories easily? 
> 
> I used to use tcsh and it had a nice feature (which I have totally
> forgotten what its name was) to specify a set of directories where cd will
> try to find a directory if it did not exist in the current path.
> 
> While I was writing this I found that it also exists in bash, and
> enabled it (CDPATH). I should have read this part of the man page long
> time ago!
> 
> Yet, I am curious to know, are there any utilities that people use to
> quickly move to directories (other than writing aliases)?
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Daniel M. German                  
> http://turingmachine.org/
> http://silvernegative.com/
> dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca
> replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .
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