4 ms·

'cd -' go back to previous directory. Genius! How did I not know this?

• 2mur 16y ago
  'cd !$' is another recent discovery for me, as in: mv somefile -t /somedir cd !$ # now you are in /somedir
  • kjetil 16y ago
    A more general way to do this is with M-. (Esc-.). This fetches the last argument from the previously entered command. Very handy when you need to apply multiple commands to a file or directory. Repeat this key combo to fetch the last argument from further back in your command history. I use this all the time (almost as much as tab completion).
  • nwomack 16y ago
    even better (if you are using bash, not sure about other shells) and use shopt -s histverify then if you type !$<enter> will replace !$ with /somedir but not hit return, so you could then modify it. Then you could do... mv somefile -t /somedir vim !$<enter>/somefile
    • steve___ 16y ago
      Try adding this to your .inputrc file $if Bash Space: magic-space $endif Now the history expansion will be done when 'space' is pressed.
• RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  It's really handy if you need to jump back and forth between two directories with diverse paths.
  • chronomex 16y ago
    For that I usually use pushd. [chronomex@gir ~]$ mkdir test1 test2 [chronomex@gir ~]$ cd test2 [chronomex@gir ~/test2]$ pwd /home/chronomex/test2 [chronomex@gir ~/test2]$ pushd ../test1 ~/test1 ~/test2 [chronomex@gir ~/test1]$ pwd /home/chronomex/test1 [chronomex@gir ~/test1]$ pushd ~/test2 ~/test1 [chronomex@gir ~/test2]$ pwd /home/chronomex/test2 [chronomex@gir ~/test2]$
    • billswift 16y ago
      On older systems you had to do a fairly complicated set up for pushd/popd yourself. I did once in along 1998 or so, but never bothered again, since the great majority of the time "cd -" was good enough.
    • xhuang 16y ago
      the command go with pushd is popd,which pop the last path you pushed into the queue.
• adambyrtek 16y ago
  You should consider investing some time to go through a good shell tutorial, maybe even read a book on shells. You will find many more pearls like 'cd -', which is really one of the most basic and well known ones.
• telemachos 16y ago
  If you don't know it, I highly recommend learning about CDPATH as well. A good CDPATH means that directories you work in often are always easy to get to. (Add TAB completion in its latest version and they're even easier to get to.) http://www.caliban.org/bash/ http://www.caliban.org/bash/ (Under bash Tips and Tricks) One other good cd trick: # Shamelessly stolen from Learning the Bash Shell (3ed), Cameron Newham # & Bill Rosenblatt my_cd() { case "$#" in 0|1) builtin cd $1 ;; 2) newdir=${PWD//$1/$2} case "$newdir" in $PWD) echo "bash: my_cd: bad substitution" >&2 return 1 ;; *) builtin cd "$newdir" ;; esac ;; *) echo "bash: my_cd: wrong arg count" 1>&2 return 1 ;; esac } The function allows you to do simple search/replace on your current working directory and cd to the replaced version, all in one step. This is a built-in ksh feature, but easy enough to enable in bash. If you have directories with relatively deep nesting and very similar names (e.g. school/2009-2010/compsci1/grades versus school/2010-2011/compsci2/grades), it's a godsend. An example: $ pwd /Users/telemachus/mmt/2010-2011/compsci2 $ my_cd compsci2 compsci4 $ pwd /Users/telemachus/mmt/2010-2011/compsci4