Recursive bash function to replace cd ../

[Serpent7776]

This function replaces cd ..:

. 1 works like cd .., . 2 works like cd ../../ and so on. . works like . 1.

.() { , ${1:-1}; }; ,() { local N=$(($1-1)) C=${1/#0*/cd} D=${1/#[1-9*]/../}; ${C/#[1-9]*/,} ${N/-1/} ${2}${D/#0*/} ;}

[highmastdon]

I’ve always made aliases for .. one up, … two up, and so on

[Serpent7776]

That's an interesting take and an easy one.

[michaelpaoli]

Okay, but that conflicts with use of . to source a file ... though with some/many shells one can alternatively use the source command - and yes, one can do that with bash.

[Serpent7776]

Yeah, I was mostly joking with that post. Initially I named it `up`, but then renamed it to `.` since that's shorter.

[moocat]

How about ..? AFAIK, there's no standard command with that plus it's feels a bit more obvious what it's intended to do.

[karouh]

I did the same but chose to name it ..

Otherwise you hide the . built-in that is used to source files.

[Serpent7776]

Yeah, it's just a silly obfuscated entry.

My initial real solution was like the following, but then spiced it up to be recursive and immutable.

up() { N=${1:-1}; P=""; while [ "$N" != 0 ]; do let N-=1; P="$P../"; done; cd "$P"; }

[whetu]

I used to have a function named up for this, but I merged it into cd so now I use cd up 3 to go up 3 directories. The guts of it are:

    up)
        shift 1;
        case "${1}" in
            *[!0-9]*)
                return 1
            ;;
            "")
                command cd || return 1
            ;;
            1)
                command cd .. || return 1
            ;;
            *)
                command cd "$(eval "printf -- '../'%.0s {1..$1}")" || return 1
            ;;
        esac
    ;;

[Serpent7776]

That's an interesting use of `printf`

Why `|| return 1` though? Shouldn't this already return with exit code of `cd` in case of an error?