CDPATH is kind of flawed. It wants to be a mapping feature.

So that is to say, when I type "cd foo", I want foo to be "cd alias" for some "/path/to/foo" or possibly even "/path/to/bar". I know where I want to go; I don't need a search to find it!

Fortunately, there is a way to get that with CDPATH. You can make some directory, say /home/yourself/.cdfarm.

Inside .cdfarm/, you have symlinks to various directories

foo -> /path/to/foo bar -> /path/to/elsewhere/bar

and you put this .cdfarm into your CDPATH:

CDPATH=:~/.cdfarm

and that's it, all other management is via ~/.cdfarm.

Unfortunately, the symlinks appear in the PWD, unless you use "cd -P"; for that you can "alias cd='cd -P".

Even if you use -P, when Bash's cd resolves something via CDPATH, it prints the target path name with the /home/yourself/.cdpath/... in it, as it appears before -P resolution. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it reminds you of how you are getting to where you are.

Think of this as an auto-CDPATH. With CDPATH you have to explicitly add the directories. And even with CDPATH, it won't work if you need to go deep down.

As an example, say I have ~/Programs/Firefox/Profiles/kdskdj/Cache.

Most people would put just ~/Programs or ~/Programs/Firefox into CDPATH. If you want to get to the Cache directory, you still need to know "Profiles/kdskdj/Cache". With z, if you're lucky, you'll just do "z Cache". Worst case, "z Fire Cache"

Do you know of completion for the cd command that works with CDPATH? So that when you type "cd prefix[Tab]" it will give completions from CDPATH?

for one, it is not built into either of my shells: Windows gitbash, or OSX terminal.