Zsh: Open a new tab in the same directory

Question

Say you are in /very/cool/and/deeply/nested/folder . And you want to open a new terminal tab in the same folder.

How would you do that?

I use Mac OS and Zsh.

Answer 1

Use Oh-My-Zsh and add the 'osx' plugin in your ~/.zshrc like:

plugins=(git osx)

That's all you need to do!

Answer 2

Another option now available in Mac OS X Lion is using the built-in feature. It uses 'escape sequences' to find out the current directory. For me it works if I use these commands in my .zshrc:

precmd () {print -Pn "\e]2; %~/ \a"}
preexec () {print -Pn "\e]2; %~/ \a"}

it is also possible to use PS1 (for Bash, from this wiki):

export PS1="\[\e]2;\u@\H \w\a\e[32;1m\]>\[\e[0m\] "

where \e]2; is the escape sequence to print things in the titlebar. It seems that Terminal.app is getting its information from there.

More information:

• http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/Unix/Bash-prompts.php
• http://www.funtoo.org/wiki/Prompt_Magic
• http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/xterm-title-bar-manipulations.html

Answer 3

This is how you do it in bash.

This shell script will tell (quiet literally, using Applescript) Terminal.app to open a new tab then switch to the current directory:

#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal"' \
-e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "t" using command down' \
-e "do script with command \"cd `pwd`;clear\" in selected tab of the front window" \
-e 'end tell' &> /dev/null

… put the above shell script in a directory in your $PATH (i.e. /usr/local/bin) and make sure it’s executable:

$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/nt

(source)

Answer 4

gdirs seems like a way to almost do it: new tab, then gdirs to select the deep directory and voila. My first idea was to make the directory stack shared among all tabs and do cd ~1 after the new tab, but I cannot find how to do that, as it seems each instance of zsh keeps its own. History sharing goes via a common file, so maybe that could be done here too...

Answer 5

@Nifle's code does work. In ~/bin…

mate nt #paste code, save
chmod +x nt
source ~/.profile

In my .profile I have the following:

export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

If you don't have something like that, nt won't work.

Answer 6

If you need to open this new tab right now, without changing your config files or installing new plugins, run this:

pwd | pbcopy

Then open a new Terminal tab manually (with ⌘T), and in the new tab:

cd "`pbpaste`"

Warning: this will overwrite the contents of the system clipboard.

---

An alternative, longer method that does not overwrite the clipboard:

pwd > $TMPDIR/wd

Open your new tab.

cd "$(cat $TMPDIR/wd)"
rm -f $TMPDIR/wd