Is there a command for going back a number of steps in a directory, without using cd?

Question

I'm constantly going 'cd ../../../../'. Is there a command/alias that could let me go 'cmd 4' and I'd be taken back 4 directories?

Answer 1

Put this in your ~/.bashrc:

cdup() {
  levels=${1-1}
  while ((levels--)); do
    cd ..
  done
}

(The name cdup comes from the corresponding FTP command, just FYI.)

Answer 2

Two thoughts that might be of use to you:

1. cd -
   change back to the last directory you were in. I use this all the time to get from deep down in my code tree back to the root of it... though that only works if you cd'd down into it in one change.

2. cdd old new
   this was a script function I had written in the past that I used for moving around between similar trees. Basically it took two arguments and did a regexp on your path, great for moving around between branches and such. For example if you were in ~/bzr/web/trunk/path/to/feature and needed to get to ~/bzr/web/feature-branch/path/to/feature then you would do cdd trunk feature-branch. The implementation I had was in an archaic shell language on AIX, but it was pretty trivial, so should be easy to implement in shell of choice if you need it. For us it was very useful because the structure looked like: .../{product}/{version}/{release}/{src,bld,dbg,pkg,tst}/{component}/... so moving around in that tree got insane pretty quick.

Answer 3

Here is an alternative way:

function cdup
{
    cd $(for ((i=0 ; i<$1 ;i++)); do printf "../" ; done)
}

Answer 4

I use autojump which allow me to type :

j h
>> /home/cjulien
j et
>> /etc

it can learn from your habits and is very light (and addictive ;) )

Answer 5

You might want to look into using pushd and popd to set location markers and and get back there easily from whatever directory you changed to.

You could also set a variable with the name of a directory you use a lot, then CD there:

MYPROJ=~/projects/name/src
cd $MYPROJ
proj1='cd $MYPROJ'

Answer 6

Quick and dirty:

cmd () { dir=.; for i in $(seq 1 $1); do dir=$dir/..; done; pushd $dir; }

Formulated to only change directory once.

Answer 7

Sure, why not:

up() {
    [ $# = 0 ] && cd .. && return
    [ $1 = 0 ] && return
    cd .. && up $(($1 - 1))
}

Answer 8

I was taught to use 'pushd' and 'popd' for such circumstances.

For example, type 'pushd .' and then 'cd /home'. Now type 'popd' and you will be back to where you started.

'pushd'/'popd' is a stack, you can push as many directories on there as you like, but it is last on, first off when you popd.