5 ms·

The Z command line utility has saved me a ton of time. It remembers the directories you’ve visited and lets you jump to them with just a few characters. Almost

The Z command line utility has saved me a ton of time. It remembers the directories you’ve visited and lets you jump to them with just a few characters. Almost like Chrome’s autocomplete for recently-visited directories (if you’re used to being able to type “g” to go to gmail or “n” for “news.ycombinator.com”...). For instance I can run “z B” and it’ll jump to my ~/Business directory (and “z ss” would do the same). https://github.com/rupa/z https://github.com/rupa/z

hombre_fatal 7y ago
This is one of those things I set up a decade ago and it's become such a part of how I use my computer that I'm confused for a moment whenever it's not there. It's one of those rare tools that interacts with my stream of consciousness which is one step away from mind reading.
mszcz 7y ago
Did you mean "(...) almost like _Firefox's_ autocomplete (...)"? I know this is OT but one of the reasons I've switched is history search that actually works.
lloeki 7y ago
I prefer my own kd, which is 40 dead simple LOCs of shell and is predictable since it operates only on dirs you added (which sounds like a chore but is just fine in practice) kd foo $PWD # stores as foo kd f # jumps to foo kd # in a Ruby project subdir, jumps up to where the Gemfile is https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/shell/kd https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/shell/kd
- lloeki 7y ago
  Just updated kd with a long-time feature I wanted: tty detection! kd f # => jumps to foo echo $(kd f) # => outputs foo's path # some creative, if nonsensical, examples: cp some/file $(kd foo)/app/controllers/whatevs cp $(kd bar)/Gemfile $(kd foo)/Gemfile kd foo && cd app/controllers && cp $(kd)/config/whatever . This is useful and possible because kd's output is stable and predictable: it always returns the last prefix match of the kdrc file (or, without argument, the project's top-level dir), and it returns non-zero rc on failure. Plus zsh will even gladly expand the result on <TAB> for double checking.
RMPR 7y ago
For this particular case, I use a ncurses based file manager: ranger
- fdw 7y ago
  Instead of z, I use https://github.com/wting/autojump https://github.com/wting/autojump, which is written in Python. This has the benefit that you can call it from outside the shell, too. Since I also love ranger as a file manager, I wrote my own integration of both: https://github.com/fdw/ranger-autojump https://github.com/fdw/ranger-autojump . It remembers where I went in ranger, and I can also call autojump in ranger.
sandreas 7y ago
Hehe since i got to know 'cd -' which changes back to the last directory i did not miss this feature - but it sounds interesting, and i should try it out.
- austinjp 7y ago
  You're going to love pushd and popd.
leu-mas 7y ago
another popular alternative I see mentioned a lot https://github.com/wting/autojump https://github.com/wting/autojump > autojump is a faster way to navigate your filesystem. It works by maintaining a database of the directories you use the most from the command line.
GrantZvolsky 7y ago
I couldn't do without a 'bookmarks' feature that I implemented for my terminal. It's triggered with `Alt+b`: 1. Scan an eternal history file for `cd` with absolute path except for /tmp/* 2. Sort and filter out duplicates 3. Call fzf and let user pick the desired result 4. Upon selection don't enter the directory but instead type `cd <selection>` into the prompt so that the user can navigate further using <Tab>. What's nice about this approach is that it automatically builds your bookmarks, but only from `cd` commands where you deliberately used an absolute path. Here's the code. It has some prerequisites (fzf[0] and ~/.eternal_bash_history[1]) and probably only works with my terminal (Xfce Terminal); it took a bit of tinkering to get it to work. # ~/bashrc.d/aliases.sh __b() { # bookmarks; props to fzf for providing examples of READLINE configuration local selected="cd "$(cat ~/.bash_eternal_history | grep '^cd /' | egrep -v '\.\.|/tmp' | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq | fzf --exact) READLINE_LINE="${READLINE_LINE:0:$READLINE_POINT}$selected${READLINE_LINE:$READLINE_POINT}" READLINE_POINT=$(( READLINE_POINT + ${#selected} )) } bind -m vi-insert -x '"\eb": "__b"' 2>/dev/null [0]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/19533853 https://stackoverflow.com/a/19533853

hombre_fatal 7y ago

This is one of those things I set up a decade ago and it's become such a part of how I use my computer that I'm confused for a moment whenever it's not there. It's one of those rare tools that interacts with my stream of consciousness which is one step away from mind reading.

mszcz 7y ago

Did you mean "(...) almost like _Firefox's_ autocomplete (...)"? I know this is OT but one of the reasons I've switched is history search that actually works.

lloeki 7y ago

I prefer my own kd, which is 40 dead simple LOCs of shell and is predictable since it operates only on dirs you added (which sounds like a chore but is just fine in practice) kd foo $PWD # stores as foo kd f # jumps to foo kd # in a Ruby project subdir, jumps up to where the Gemfile is https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/shell/kd https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/shell/kd

lloeki 7y ago
Just updated kd with a long-time feature I wanted: tty detection! kd f # => jumps to foo echo $(kd f) # => outputs foo's path # some creative, if nonsensical, examples: cp some/file $(kd foo)/app/controllers/whatevs cp $(kd bar)/Gemfile $(kd foo)/Gemfile kd foo && cd app/controllers && cp $(kd)/config/whatever . This is useful and possible because kd's output is stable and predictable: it always returns the last prefix match of the kdrc file (or, without argument, the project's top-level dir), and it returns non-zero rc on failure. Plus zsh will even gladly expand the result on <TAB> for double checking.

RMPR 7y ago

For this particular case, I use a ncurses based file manager: ranger

fdw 7y ago
Instead of z, I use https://github.com/wting/autojump https://github.com/wting/autojump, which is written in Python. This has the benefit that you can call it from outside the shell, too. Since I also love ranger as a file manager, I wrote my own integration of both: https://github.com/fdw/ranger-autojump https://github.com/fdw/ranger-autojump . It remembers where I went in ranger, and I can also call autojump in ranger.

sandreas 7y ago

Hehe since i got to know 'cd -' which changes back to the last directory i did not miss this feature - but it sounds interesting, and i should try it out.

austinjp 7y ago
You're going to love pushd and popd.

leu-mas 7y ago

another popular alternative I see mentioned a lot https://github.com/wting/autojump https://github.com/wting/autojump > autojump is a faster way to navigate your filesystem. It works by maintaining a database of the directories you use the most from the command line.

GrantZvolsky 7y ago

I couldn't do without a 'bookmarks' feature that I implemented for my terminal. It's triggered with `Alt+b`: 1. Scan an eternal history file for `cd` with absolute path except for /tmp/* 2. Sort and filter out duplicates 3. Call fzf and let user pick the desired result 4. Upon selection don't enter the directory but instead type `cd <selection>` into the prompt so that the user can navigate further using <Tab>. What's nice about this approach is that it automatically builds your bookmarks, but only from `cd` commands where you deliberately used an absolute path. Here's the code. It has some prerequisites (fzf[0] and ~/.eternal_bash_history[1]) and probably only works with my terminal (Xfce Terminal); it took a bit of tinkering to get it to work. # ~/bashrc.d/aliases.sh __b() { # bookmarks; props to fzf for providing examples of READLINE configuration local selected="cd "$(cat ~/.bash_eternal_history | grep '^cd /' | egrep -v '\.\.|/tmp' | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq | fzf --exact) READLINE_LINE="${READLINE_LINE:0:$READLINE_POINT}$selected${READLINE_LINE:$READLINE_POINT}" READLINE_POINT=$(( READLINE_POINT + ${#selected} )) } bind -m vi-insert -x '"\eb": "__b"' 2>/dev/null [0]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf https://github.com/junegunn/fzf [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/19533853 https://stackoverflow.com/a/19533853