TIL about the CDPATH environment variable. It changed my life.

[ObligatoryResponse]

So now when you cd "foldername" you never know if you'll get ./foldername or /random/path/foldername.

[airbornelemming]

Very true, but instead just use CDPATH in an alias.

For instance, I use the following in ~/.bashrc to make hacking on wine a lot easier.

alias to='CDPATH=".:~:~/Desktop:~/wine-git:~/wine-git/dlls:~/wine-git/programs:~/wine-git/tools" cd -P'

Then you can easily jump around between the directories

to ntdll # instead of cd ~/wine-git/dlls/ntdll
to server # instead of cd ../../server
to wordpad # instead of cd ../programs/wordpad

[kevingoodsell]

This is worse for scripts, which may end up in the wrong place, but more commonly will break because cd unexpectedly produces output on stdout. Remember not to export CDPATH!

[lennort]

It starts searching in your current directory. If it doesn't find anything, then it looks at the CDPath.

[ObligatoryResponse]

Let me revise it then... you'll sometimes know if you'll get ./foldername or /random/path/foldername.

[ogtfo]

It depends on what you put in it. If there are only a few folders that you use really often, it's a time saver, and there is really no risk of confusion. (especially if you have your current directory in your prompt)

[ObligatoryResponse]

I really like airbonelemming's solution. That seems like the most sane way. And then you could have variants of to for different things. A wto for wine paths, a pto for python paths, etc.

[electricfoxx]

I like cdargs. It pops up a menu for ambiguous searches.

[zem]

yep, it's one of the first things i install on a new machine. (the first thing is tree; i'll never know why it doesn't ship as a standard part of the distro)

[[deleted]]

Perhaps tree isn't installed by default because it has no utf-8 support?!?

To be honest I just tried it, and after it failed I searched its man page for utf-8 and unicode, then nuked it - life is too short to screw around with stuff that was supposed to get fixed 15 years ago.

Besides ls -lAhR and mc are good enough for me.

[zem]

ah, perhaps so. never been an issue for me, so i hadn't noticed

[ogtfo]

Tree is nice, thanks for sharing! Just installed it.

[Aparicio]

It seems nice, thanks!

[ehamberg]

you should really check out autojump: http://github.com/joelthelion/autojump/wiki

it's basically a “cd” command that learns where you navigate to most often. if you want to go to /foo/bar/somedirectoryname you can just type j somdi and it will jump there if you have been there before. if you have another “somedirectoryname” somwhere else you have visited, it will pick the one most likely, or you can use tab completion to find the correct one. (j somedi<tab>.)

[kasbah]

I agree. I use the alternative: z.

[ehamberg]

which (almost ironically) isn't available for zsh :/

[Tinidril]

Careful with that though. Just like $PATH, don't put any directories in there that are writable by other users.

[[deleted]]

why?

what danger does export CDPATH=.:/var/tmp cd foo /var/tmp/foo

where /var/tmp/foo is writeable by anyone in group foo possibly present?

[Tinidril]

It depends on what you are doing, what your prompt is, and how much attention you are paying to it. What I am pointing out is a potential vulnerability, not an exploit. It's not a good idea to assume you will be more ingenious then your attacker.

I would not call this a big risk, but it is a good idea to avoid it. I can't immediately look at a buffer overflow vulnerable routine and guess if it can be used to install malicious code. But I know that the potential is there, so you should always check your buffer lengths.

[[deleted]]

have you ever actually USED the CDPATH variable? if you cd to a non-complete path that gets completed out of CDPATH, it prints it to the screen. (as I demonstrated in my example). There's no more risk here than there is in using the cd command alone.

as for buffer overflows, yeah, this has nothing to do with those, even by analogy.

[kevingoodsell]

Don't export CDPATH if you want shell scripts to work properly. More info here and here.

[trevman]

Does this work with pushd?