Z - Jump to directories that you actually use. | Hacker News Reader

Z - Jump to directories that you actually use.

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101 pointssnihalani32 comments

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I use fasd, which is just like z, v, autojump, only much more powerful: https://github.com/clvv/fasd

It's even based on Z, cool. You've reminded me to update my copy as the version I'm using is f.sh!

you get + 100 karma for posting that. I can't believe I didn't come up with something similar in all these years

This looks like a serious productivity boost. Where has it been hiding all my life?

Thanks a million! :D

Seriously handy, thanks! I was about to dive into Z, but this looks even better.

No tricks, just regular cd:

  % pwd
  /home/aram
  % cd mstate
  /home/aram/src/launchpad.net/juju-core/mstate
  % cd go/src
  /home/aram/go/src
  % cd plan9
  /home/aram/plan9
  %

It uses the $CDPATH environment variable ($cdpath in rc(1)). $CDPATH is a list of places in which to search for the wanted directory. I put all the things I regularly use there, and my cds are almost always short, usually just a single name.

I don't maintain $CDPATH myself, my profile runs a one liner that descends into certain directories and constructs $CDPATH for me within the constrains of some rules (for example excludes leafs, excludes {bin,doc,pkg,test}, etc).

Finding about $CDPATH was a huge productivity boost to me, not only in time saved typing, but in allowing me to change the way I work. I now rarely care where things in the filesystem are (e.g. various source code for various software, where the build products are, etc). I used to do a lot of moving and symlinking around, to arrange stuff so I remember where I've put it and to keep paths short, but now I don't care. It could be wherever, it's just one name away. The namespace had become a big hash.

Just tried this to see if tab-completion works. It does (only for cd of course). BTW: what is "rc(1)"?

Rc(1) is the Unix v10/Plan 9 shell[1] written by Tom Duff[2], of Duff's device[3] fame. Rc(1) is of course available in Unix as well, I use the port from plan9port[4].

[1] http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Duff

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff%27s_device

[4] http://swtch.com/plan9port/

|my profile runs a one liner... what's that one liner look like?

I lied, seems to be 5 lines total :-)

  export CDPATH=.:~
  cdpaths="$([ -d ~/src ] && find ~/src -mindepth 1 -type d | egrep -v '/(\.)|_[a-zA-Z0-9]' | egrep -v '(bin)|(cmd)|(doc)|(lib)|(pkg)|(test)' | xargs -n1 dirname | uniq)"
  for i in $cdpaths; do
  	CDPATH=$CDPATH:$i
  done

This is a pretty good solution, however there are a few things other programs add on:

- $CDPATH requires manual management. You're using a line in profile, but I imagine that's limited to specific directories and creates overhead when creating new shells. - What happens with namespace collision? First entry in $CDPATH wins? - Fuzzy searching for mistyped directory names. I don't find this feature that useful personally, but was requested quite a bit by others.

William (autojump maintainer)

Fish-compatible version: https://github.com/sjl/z-fish

Thanks for that, added! It looks pretty promising.

I've been using a tool called autojump that does a similar thing and I love it.. https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump

Tools like Z and autojump are fantastic timesavers.

If you like his Z, check out his V (if you use Vim).

https://github.com/rupa/v

CDPATH, as desribed in man bash

'The search path for the cd command. This is a colon-separated list of directories in which the shell looks for destination directories specified by the cd command. A sample value is ".:~:/usr".'

In case anyone else is wondering what "frecency" is:

Frecency is a portmantaeu of ’recent’ and ’frequency’. It is a weighted rank that depends on how often and how recently something occured. As far as I know, Mozilla came up with the term.

I have been using this--very handy. Is there a version that doesn't cd? It'd be nice for ls, etc.

just use an alias wrapper like:

  alias zls='z \!*;ls;cd -'

(with additional zll etc for ls -l or -a)

Is this good for zsh? Is there a preferred alternative?

It works just fine with zsh. If you're on a mac you can easily install z (and keep it up to date) with `brew install z`

FYI - The caveat for how to set up z for zsh were wrong in brew. I just submitted a pull request to fix this.

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/pull/14621

Great, updating brew asap!

Shameless plug: Bash function to jump back in path

https://gist.github.com/1119556

In bash, you can just cd - to pop back to the previous working directory, like popd without the pushd.

I also set .bash_profile aliases to quickly cd up the directory tree with just dots. It's silly, but surprising helpful.

  alias ..='cd ..'
  alias ...='cd ../..'
  alias ....='cd ../../..'

I like that idea, I could definitely see it being helpful. I've type cd.. too many times when I meant to say cd ..

me too. That's why I also:

  alias cd..='cd ..'

I did some Googling and was not satisfied with any of the solutions (pushd/popd, aliases, CDPATH etc.). That's why I wrote this. Works fine for me :)

PS: The whole story on my blog https://chanux.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/no-more-cd-dot-dot-s...

At least '..' is defined by default in zsh.

Posz for Powershell - https://github.com/manojlds/posz

Does anyone know what the initial --add is for? I'm using z-fish and I'm wondering if I can elide it.

It's a wonderful little tool. I love it. Give it a try, you won't regret!

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